Daniel Craig’s years of rage

Daniel Craig grew up angry, said Stephen Rodrick in Men’s Journal. When he was 4 years old, his parents split, and Craig moved with his mother and older sister from the well-to-do English city of Chester to nearby Liverpool, where “Thatcherism” was a dirty word and unemployment was at Detroit levels. His art teacher mom would take him to watch political plays at the city’s left-wing theaters.

“You’d go and laugh at the government,” says Craig, 43. “Laugh at the fact that Liverpool had this reputation of being full of thieves—because it was full of thieves. People were stealing hubcaps to try and make some money to feed their kids.” The teenage Craig often spent his evenings boozing and brawling in local pubs. “I wasn’t a particularly good fighter,” the James Bond actor admits. “I’m still not.”

He escaped Liverpool when he was 16, winning a place at London’s prestigious National Youth Theatre. But Craig held on to his sense of rage, which he now directs at everything from politicians (“s---heads”) to acting, something he dismisses as “bulls---.” “If it says on my gravestone, ‘Daniel Craig: Grumpy Twat,’ then fine,” he says. “There you go.”

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