Sam Mendes has revealed that he initially thought casting Daniel Craig as James Bond was a 'terrible idea.'
Sam Mendes
Mendes has worked with Craig a few years earlier on Road to Perdition and didn't think that the actor was right for the image of Bond at that time.
However, Mendes admits that Craig has done a great job in the role and is glad that the franchise changed to fit around the actor. And it was Craig's performance in Casino Royale that got him interested in Bond.
Speaking to BBC Radio's Test Match Special, the director said: "I had cast Daniel Craig in this film I made in Chicago called Road To Perdition about 15 years ago, and it was his first big American film. The role of Bond came up four or five years later and I was called by Entertainment Weekly, a showbiz publication, and they said 'your old friend and collaborator Daniel Craig has been suggested as Bond, what do you think?' and I said 'terrible idea - he shouldn't do it'."
"For me at the time I thought Bond had become the opposite of what Daniel is - a slightly disengaged, urbane jokey eyebrow-raising, you know, a pastiche in a way, and I felt Daniel's reality and his passion and honesty as an actor would not work.
"But of course the franchise adapted to work with Daniel and when I saw Casino Royale, I thought it was a fantastic piece of casting. And it was that that got me re-interested in Bond as a movie."
Mendes is set to return to the Bond director's chair later this year with the already highly anticipated Spectre, which is his second consecutive 007 movie.
Mendes reunited with Craig back in 2012 for Skyfall, which went on to become the first Bond movie to gross over $1 billion at the global box office - it was also a commercial smash.
The excitement around Spectre is growing as Mendes and Craig are back - this will be Craig's fourth outing as the super spy. Ralph Fiennes, Ben Whishaw, and Naomie Harris are also returning, while Monica Bellucci, Dave Bautista, Lea Seydoux, Andrew Scott and double Oscar winner Christoph Waltz are some of the new names on the cast list.
Spectre will be the first directorial outing for Mendes since the success of Skyfall and it is set to be one of the biggest movies of the year.
Spectre is released 26th October.
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