By Sarah Lyall
New York Times News Service



LONDON -- It took two years of high-level negotiations to arrange a meeting with Daniel Craig. The man better known as James Bond might well be the world's most elusive pretend spy.

The long wait allowed plenty of time for disturbing rumors to marinate. For instance: He is surly and defensive, a reporter-averse utterer of combative monosyllables. Or this, from two women working on his publicity: He has more sexual magnetism than anyone we have ever met.

But there he was in jeans, his arm in a sling from a recent shoulder surgery. He was wearing a thick cardigan that walked a sensitive line between dumpy and stylish. He was, of course, unfairly attractive anyway, in his craggy, lived-in, blue-eyed way, but not so much as to render anyone speechless.

He was polite to a fault. He stood up when his publicist's assistant brought a cup of tea. He apologized several times for being five minutes late. He acted as if he had all day to chat about Bond and other topics.

Unlike many movie stars who come to believe the myth of their superiority, Craig tends to mock his celebrity.

Passing beneath two celebratory posters of himself as James Bond in his publicist's office, he grimaced and muttered, "That's my Dorian Gray portrait." Asked whether he saw himself as a natural leading man, he said, "Fat chance."

When he was cast as Bond, filling the position most recently vacated by Pierce Brosnan, Craig did not seem like an obvious choice. He was an actor's actor known for his intensity of focus and his wide range of challenging, counterintuitive roles.

He has played, among other things, a pornography baron from Manchester, England, on the BBC miniseries Our Friends in the North; a college professor pursued by a male stalker in Enduring Love; a builder sleeping with his girlfriend's sexagenarian mother in The Mother; a drug-dealing businessman in Layer Cake; a killer full of murderous rage and heartbreaking tenderness in Infamous; and the poet Ted Hughes in Sylvia.

"Everybody said, 'Oh, aren't you afraid you'll be typecast?' " he recalled of taking the Bond role. "And I said, 'Of course I am,' but if it has to be this -- well, that's not too bad."

Traditionalists were appalled. The British tabloids sniped that he was too short, too blond, too actory; they spread the rumor that he didn't know how to drive a stick shift, let alone one attached to an Aston Martin.

But from the first scene in Casino Royale (2006), in which Bond brutally kills a man with his bare hands and then coolly shoots and kills his own corrupt boss, Craig proved to be a rare combination of plausibility, physicality and charisma. He got rave reviews, and not just from Bond's traditional fan base.

The latest Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, to open Nov. 14, is full of big guns, big explosions and big stunts, many of them performed by Craig.

While he bulked up for Casino -- he wanted in this film to "look as if he could kill people just by looking at them," his personal trainer, a former Royal Navy commando, said recently. The actor focused on building up his stamina, going for lean and mean over brawn.

Craig said that he had been determined to ensure that the story made logical and emotional sense. Quantum begins moments after Casino ends, with Bond on the island where he has just shot one of the men responsible for the death of Vesper Lynd, the treacherous love of his life.

Craig is also appearing in Defiance (set to open Dec. 31), based on the true story of the Bielskis, a trio of freedom-fighting Jewish brothers in World War II.

Defying the Nazis (and the odds), they set up an unlikely community of tough, armed refugees in the Belarussian forest. Craig plays Tuvia, their complicated leader -- sometimes hot-headed, sometimes coolly rational; now seeking revenge, now preaching restraint.

The shoot was tough. The actors had to speak Russian in a number of scenes; they also had to live more or less in the woods, in sometimes extremely frigid conditions, for three months.

The director of Defiance, Edward Zwick, said it was interesting to watch Craig take on the role, with all its ambivalence and inner conflict, in tandem with playing the self-assured Bond.

"You see very clearly his ambition as an actor; he refuses to be just one thing," Zwick said. "What you have to understand about Daniel is that he is a working actor who considers himself that. He began in the theater and did all sorts of ensemble work, and in some ways this was a territory in which he's more comfortable than in being the star who's out in front of the movie."

Craig is determined to continue pursuing extra-Bond roles.

"I've been so fortunate to land this amazing role in a huge franchise," the 40-year-old said. "It's set me up in a really good way for life, and that's wonderful. But I love acting, and I genuinely think it's an important part of what life is about.