Born in Chester, Daniel Craig grew up in nearby Liverpool before moving
to London aged 16. He trained at the National Youth Theatre and from
there won a place at the prestigious Guildhall School of Music and Dance.
He made his film debut in the coming-of-age drama The Power of One (1992),
directed by John G. Avildsen. A few made-for-TV movies followed before
his role of commoner Master Kane in the Disney adventure A Kid in King
Arthur's Court (1995). In the U.K., he starred in the BBC’s ambitious
nine-part miniseries Our Friends in the North, four-part series Moll
Flanders, and the TV mystery The Ice House. In 1997 he worked with German
director Peter Sehr on the romantic thriller Obsession (1997).
His first leading role came in 1998 with his portrayal of George Dyer,
the intimate friend of painter Francis Bacon in John Maybury's Love
Is the Devil (1998). Other leading roles followed in the World War I
drama The Trench
(1999), schizophrenic man in Some
Voices (2000), and Hotel Splendide (2000). In Hollywood, he had
smaller roles in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) alongside Angelina Jolie,
and the angry son of an Irish mobster in Road to Perdition (2002). In
2002, he played the German physicist Werner Heisenberg in the BBC historical
drama Copenhagen (2002).
His first mainstream leading role came in 2003 as Ted Hughes, the partner
of Sylvia Plath in Christine Jeffs' biopic Sylvia (2003). In 2004 came
to greater prominence as the enigmatic XXXX in the gritty thriller Layer
Cake (2004) and a university professor stalked by Rhys Ifans in
the Hitchcockian Enduring
Love (2004). In 2005, Craig became the sixth actor to take on the
role of James Bond since 1962, after Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger
Moore, Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan. He has recently finished filming
with Steven Spielberg on his film Munich (2005), about the aftermath
of the terrorist attacks at the 1972 Olympics, and his latest role is
as real-life killer Perry Smith, who was immortalised in Truman Capote's
book In Cold Blood in Douglas McGrath’s Have You Heard? (2006).
