Daniel Craig says fame made him completely paranoid after first James Bond movie

There are quite a few similarities between celebrities and international super spies. For both, getting recognized while going about their daily tasks could be a recipe for disaster. Both groups would likely prefer to (at least occasionally) do their work under the veil of complete anonymity. At some point, both have to accept that their life will never be the same as it was before they accepted their mission. 

No one knows this better than Daniel Craig, who is likely the closest thing we have to someone who’s been both. Craig played James Bond for 15 years, during which time he experienced some scary emotions his character probably used all those suits to deflect. In a recent interview with The New Yorker, Craig shared that getting famous in his teens would have been a “fucking disaster,” but “even at thirty-five or whatever (in Casino Royale), I dived into a really big, deep, dark hole.”

He continued: “I locked myself away and didn’t come out of my house and I felt paranoid… I was really rocked by it, really rocked.” That fear came with “good reason,” he explained. “The interest in you is so overwhelming. You feel like you’ll never go out again. You’ll never be able to socialize again. I think anybody who becomes famous who’s got half a heart, I think you kind of mourn your previous life. Don’t get me wrong. There’s lots of lovely things that go along with it, but the freedom that you had as a semi-anonymous human being has gone.”

It’s a tale we’ve heard time and time again from celebrities that have both just blown up and been in the game for many years. Earlier this summer, Chappell Roan made headlines for putting some very reasonable boundaries around herself, which earned her the support of a deep list of fellow artists. Just this week, Keira Knightley reflected on the ways getting famous in her teens was a personal disaster. Life as a spy may actually have been less harrowing.

Craig, at least, has found something resembling a path forward. “And then you realize you’ve got to get on with life. You’ve just got to get on with it,” he said. For him, that looks like doing movies like Knives Out and Luca Guadagnino’s Queer, which make him feel “kind of free.” “[Bond] is nearly twenty years of my life. When I took it on I was one person. I’m now completely a different person,” he said. “I’m not doing [Queer] in response to that. I’m not that small. But I couldn’t have done this movie when I was doing Bond. It would’ve felt kind of, Why? What are you trying to prove?”

Queer premieres in a limited release November 27, before opening nationwide December 13.