68 Million Pounds for Craig as Bond Again, But Ignored...

LONDON - There comes a moment, in the life of every spy, when he must come in from the cold. For Daniel Craig, that moment came this week, when the 48 year old actor declared he was ‘done’ playing James Bond. Done, done, done!

Jan Moir for the Daily MailI said, tell you what is done, oh Danny boy, my aching heart. For Craig has ignored the entreaties of his fans and turned down £68 million to appear in the next two films, which suggests he must have been desperate to slip from his human Bond age.

Certainly, he had started moaning about it a lot. Too much! The chiselled hunk would boast about doing all his own stunts, then complain about the knee injury that ensued.

He would whine that Bond was too misogynistic for modern tastes, and seemed to want to recast him as some kind of vegan metrosexual who liked to empathise with the chicks, instead of bedding them all like daffodil bulbs, as is traditional.

Thankfully, that milksop transformation never happened. Instead, Craig managed to imbue the world’s most famous spy with a raw shot of aggression and pure physicality but also made him modern and complex.

Craig’s Bond was a true patriot; the kind of trained killer who was dangerous but also, you know, decent. And I like that he took it all so darned seriously.

No wonder that a lot of female interest was sharpened by this contemporary portrayal of the celebrated MI6 operative. Not least of all because, for the first time, Bond’s ladykiller reputation was justified and convincing.

Women believed that women really would fall for him in an instant. Just try to stop us even if, way back at the beginning, the omens were less than promising.

For a start, a blond Bond? It was unthinkable. And his ears were too far down his head, like a mouse. Craig was also a bit of a shorty who looked like Mr Potato Head from some angles and had an odd habit of pouting at the most inopportune moments.