Daniel Craig is `best Bond for a generation` according to villain Mads Mikkelsen

22-Jun-2006 • Casino Royale

As Le Chiffre, he's tackling Bond's original arch nemesis. His predecessors in the role, Orson Welles from the 1976 Peter Sellers film and Peter Lorre from the 1954 Climax Mystery Theater episode. He is Mads Mikkelsen, and he's not nearly as megalomaniacal as his latest character. Honest.

FilmFocus caught up with Mikkelsen on a brief sojourn from shooting the latest Bond adventure, of course Daniel Craig's first outing in the role, to talk about the DVD release of the fabulous Pusher trilogy - in which he stars in the first two parts - but we couldn't resist pumping him for information on Casino Royale.

"It's Bond!" he told FilmFocus. "I don't know the films that well, I saw some of them when I was a kid, but it's so much fun. I'm part of a legend. Orson Welles played Le Chiffre before me; that's huge! There's nothing that can prepare you for [the scale of the production.] It's just such a different world.

"Le Chiffre is a greedy bastard who wants a lot of money," he told us, "He's not trying to take over the world; he's just a greedy bastard like the rest of us! I think people can relate to him. He's a baddie, basically, but we always tried to put a little dualism into the character. Of course, he doesn't have that camera time, that screen time, to really go with that, but it's definitely there."

"The script is a little different," he said, "It's the first time you meet Bond so he's earning his license to kill in this film. He's also falling it love so we come to discover why he doesn't do that in the other films. It's a very different script than we're used to."

And he's convinced they've got the right man for the job as far as Daniel Craig is concerned. "There's a great atmosphere on set and everyone's happy," he reassures us, "Daniel is a fantastic Bond and I think he's actually going to be the Bond for this generation. People are really underestimating him but they're going to be surprised. It's going to be a great film."

Thanks to `Pierce - Daniel` for the alert.