Dan the man

DANIEL Craig is one of those actors who's managed to sneak under the radar, building up a good body of work without becoming famous. Only recently has he even made the celebrity columns, after being linked and photographed with model Kate Moss.

The name might not be recognisable but the face will ring a few bells from TV series such as Our Friends In The North (in which he played Geordie Peacock) and Moll Flanders, and movies like Sylvia (as poet Ted Hughes opposite Gwyneth Paltrow), The Road To Perdition and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider.

He's happy switching back and forth between big budget Hollywood and low budget British pictures. Now his latest film, Layer Cake, promises to raise his profile to a level the reticent Craig might not fully appreciate.

He's an amiable enough interviewee, happy to talk about Layer Cake because he's proud of the film and wants people to see it.

"I don't pursue it for, want of a better word, the celebrity reason. I have nothing against it, but it's not for me. I have other things to do. If I'm not working, I don't want to be sitting around talking about me," he says.

The man sitting beside him, producer-director Matthew Vaughn, is equally happy to take a back seat in normal circumstances, leaving the focus on either his wife, model Claudia Schiffer, or Guy Ritchie, with whom he set up Ska Films and produced Lock Stock And Two Smoking Barrels.

Now Vaughn makes his directorial debut on Layer Cake, based on J J Connolly's novel with Craig as a nameless hero who makes a living as a drug dealer and finds retiring from the crime world isn't easy.

Vaughn inherited the project from Ritchie. "The only daunting decision was to make the decision to direct. Once I'd made it, I enjoyed every day," he says. "It was something that Guy was meant to do, but the idea of handing over to someone else didn't add up in my mind. I thought they would screw up and I might as well screw up myself."

Craig had originally been considered for Ritchie's Snatch. "He's an actor that I've never seen do a bad performance and as a first-time director that's a promising start," he says.

We know little about Craig's character in Layer Cake, but the actor approached the role the same as he would any other. "I was interested in making him someone who's not faceless, but who could mix anywhere, could get on anywhere. I thought it was important for him to mix in every circle, every layer of the cake," he explains.

Less attractive was shooting the sequence in which his character is taken threatened by gangsters on the roof of a London high-rise block under construction. Craig is not fond of heights. "I don't know how many floors up we were, but we had to climb eight rickety ladders to get there. So once you were up, you had to stay the whole day up there," he recalls.

"I was tied up and harnessed, but it was terrifying. You have to get over a fear of heights fairly quickly. I closed my eyes and opened them occasionally when I was on camera."

Craig refuses to make a difference between acting roles - whether big or small, British or American, film or television. "I prefer working on good jobs," he says. "That's the only criteria I have. I would take a job in America for the same reason I take a job here. But there's always the offer of money and that's the devil himself. If I read a script and like the director, there's no argument."

He doubts if you can have a career plan with Hollywood. He has ambitions and is booked to make a US movie next year - Spielberg's Munich Olympics drama -but, in the meantime, hopes to make something over here. "I spice up as much as possible. I don't want to lose interest," he says.

"Striking a balance never really comes into it. It's a dull answer, but it's job to job, what interests me and where my head is at the time. If I get a script in front of me which is nothing but hate and pain and I'm not in that frame of mind or don't think I can go there, I won't do the film. It's as simple as that because it's a big chunk out of your life. It's a completely personal choice. But when I'm doing it, I put all I can into it."

Money may have been a major incentive for doing Tomb Raider but, like Vaughn, he enjoys watching big movies with a tub of popcorn and hot dog.

The Chester-born actor always wanted to be an actor, since running around the playground "playing games as you do". Being taken to the theatre in Liverpool as a child also had a major influence on him. His mother knew actors and designers, so he'd get to visit backstage. "It's a magic place - dressing up and showing off, which is what I'm doing now really," he adds.

* Layer Cake (15) opens in cinemas today.

Published: 30/09/2004