DANIEL Craig self-consciously tugs at his dark blue T-shirt. All this talk of girls with dragon tattoos has focused attention on his own ink-work and - like any talk of his family - it's a subject he's quick to shut down. "Oh, it's private. I'm sorry, I've got a short T-shirt on today," Craig says, attempting to cover up his tattoos. "They're for me. Each to their own, but I get them done for myself, I don't get them done for anybody else. Even people close to me don't know what they mean. They mark moments in one's life, whatever that is. They're private."
Though it may not always seem it, the 43-year-old Daniel Craig of today is actually a far more chilled and happy creature than the Daniel Craig who was atop the crest of the James Bond wave a few years back.
He last year said Cowboys & Aliens was the most fun he'd ever had making a movie, qualifying that declaration with: "Maybe that's where my head's been at."The thing was, his second Bond film Quantum of Solace - shot in 2008 - had left him "bruised and battered, mentally as well as physically". He began to question his job. Flashes such as this were becoming more frequent: "What the f--- are we doing here? This is nonsense, we're spending all this money and we're all just jerking off, let's be honest."
Looking back now, Craig attempts to explain what he was feeling. "The Bonds are very hard work in the sense of they take two years of your life. Also, I went from nought to 60 really rapidly and it's a big change in your head. "There's a kind of false sense when you're on a movie that large - it's easy to forget why you're doing it. You go, 'Well, I'm doing it now because I have to do it, because I'm tied into this contract ... '"And I didn't start acting to be tied into a contract, I started acting because I love it. "On Quantum we were screwed because the writers' strike meant we didn't have a script. You can't cram a story into a $200 million movie, it just can't be done. So it was guess-work and ... I don't wanna be guessing with that kinda money.
"Luckily it worked out financially, and people forgave us for a lot on that movie. But we were up against it. When you've got the director and the actor - who are the only people allowed to rewrite the script during the strike - trying to rewrite the script plus direct the movie plus star in it, it's like, yeah, you're screwed.
"So possibly I got a little stung by it. I was going 'Christ, I can't work like this. It's too exhausting and not rewarding enough. And I'm not satisfied with the outcome'."
So Craig took some time out - caught up with friends and did a play with Hugh Jackman, A Steady Rain, in New York for a few months in late 2009. "That scares the s--- out of you and resets your mind a bit when you have to go out every night and make an audience enjoy your company," he says. "Then Tintin came along and Cowboys & Aliens and the Fincher thing and suddenly I felt better about things."
The "Fincher thing" is Craig's latest film, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, a US remake of the Swedish film based on the first novel in Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy. The "Fincher thing" has broken many an actor, director David Fincher's working methods famously being compared to a gulag by Robert Downey Jr. And Mark Ruffalo reckons he prayed to get fired while shooting Zodiac.
But the refreshed Craig was equal to anything Fincher could throw at him. He swears there was no breaking down, deconstructing or rebuilding. "Not even slightly. Well, maybe we deconstructed each other a little bit, but in a good way," he grins. "I love him to death.
"There's a whole thing about people saying, 'Oh, it's 40 takes!' I'm like, 'Let's do 50!' I'm only there for one reason, I'm not there to f--- about, I'm not there to have fun, I'm there to do a job. I mean, you have fun - we laughed, you kind of have to laugh on a serial killer movie. It's important you have a laugh when you're hanging from a hook on the ceiling ...
"But I love that process. Fincher is absolutely just about getting it right, getting it right, getting it right. And if you do take after take after take, it's just because it's not right."In The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Craig takes on the role played by Michael Nyqvist in the original - crusading Stockholm journalist Mikael Blomqvist. With his reputation shattered by a libel case, Blomqvist is offered a job by the elderly patriarch of a family empire: find out what happened to his niece, who disappeared 40 years ago.
Things get dangerous when he takes on a research assistant - the girl of the title, Lisbeth Salander (played by The Social Network's Rooney Mara). The role is a little different from Bond in that Blomqvist is more of a thinker than a doer. "Rooney was the one getting really beaten up on that movie," Craig laughs.
Still, Fincher reckoned the character had a "requisite masculinity to it" so - along with needing "somebody who was serious, but who could also have serious fun" - Craig shot to the top of the wishlist. "A lot of people want him and we were lucky to get in that queue," Fincher says. "He's horrendously skilful and was as good as I thought he was - I was more than surprised."
Both Fincher and Craig are quick to talk down the shadow of the Swedish film trilogy (which grossed $215 million worldwide), saying their source was Larsson's book alone. But Craig seems to have been less enticed by the story itself than by what it says about the film industry that it would take on such violent, sexy, edgy and grown-up material. "I know people are questioning why we should make another movie but as far as I'm concerned, if it's a real statement by Hollywood that they'd like to make R-rated adult movies and spend money on them and actually say there's a market out there that isn't just for everybody ... "To make a movie where you're not worried about censoring or dumbing down because you have to appeal to a larger market, then ... I've pounced," Craig says.
"Fincher jokes about it: it's an $80 million independent movie - 'cos we're not at all holding back. That's the movies I grew up watching from the '70s - people would go see The Godfather or All the President's Men because they're bright, intelligent movies that made you think and had bearing on what was going on in the world at the time. "The world is a very weird and amazing place at the moment, so if we're gonna make movies we should make movies about the world."
The initial performance of Fincher's Dragon Tattoo at the US box office again had folk asking why they bothered, but after three weeks it is holding well and studio Sony now expects it to take $300 million worldwide. That has also reportedly been enough for Sony to give the green light to both sequels.
Whether Craig (or Fincher) will return for those is uncertain. For the next year at least, Craig's world will once again be all about Bond, the role he first played in 2006's hugely successful Casino Royale.
The 23rd Bond film Skyfall began shooting last November and will be released on November 22 this year.
And it turns out the enforced lay-off between Bonds - with studio MGM in serious trouble, the production was indefinitely delayed until Sony stepped in to co-finance the movie - was a blessing in disguise, giving Craig's physical and mental bruises time to fade.
"It gave me time to rest up and heal a bit and re-address things. I was really zen about it - if it went, it went. I mean, what can you do?" he shrugs. "A guy was saying, 'Michael Fassbender wants in' ... It's his ... 'It's yours! Take it!'"Joking aside ... if it didn't happen, eventually it would with somebody else. I mean, there's been other Bonds and I'm part of that. This is not falsely getting zen about it - it's the only way to treat it.
"That's why I'm excited about doing another now, like, 'I'm ready now, let's do it'."