BREAKING THE BONDS OF MACHO TYPECASTING DANIEL CRAIG TALKS ABOUT SEX SCENES AND THE UNIVERSALITY OF FALLING IN LOVE

After almost 15 years playing one of film’s most resolutely macho characters, James Bond star Daniel Craig was ready for a fresh challenge.

- GILL PRINGLE

After twice playing camp southern detective Benoit Blanc in the Knives Out film series, his latest role is in the film Queer, portraying an outcast American expat infatuated with a younger man.

Based on William S Burroughs’s early and deeply personal novel, Queer is set in 1940s Mexico City in an era when homosexuality was still criminalised throughout much of the world, and is an aching reflection on pain, longing, love and desire.

Daniel was instantly intrigued, knowing that – under the direction of Luca Guadagnino – this would be a love story unlike any he had depicted on screen.

“I recognised something in it that I thought I could get my head into, so it was a very simple decision. I told Luca that I thought this was a love story – and I still think this is a love story,” says Daniel, 56, explaining how he first met Luca at a party 20 years ago and had always wanted to work with him.

Understandably, he does not believe that he could have made Queer during the course of his five 007 movies. “It took a while before I did other jobs around Bond, and then I stopped doing it because I just didn’t have the head space,” says the actor, who plays William Lee, a man infatuated with Drew Starkey’s Eugene Allerton.

“And I feel like the longer I do this job, you’ve got to go where your heart goes and let that lead you.