The 12 Best Daniel Craig Roles That Aren't 007

Daniel Craig first started performing when he was a child, entertaining barflies at the pub his parents ran. He'd perform impersonations of celebrities he'd seen on television. "I'd get money," Craig told GQ of his early acting efforts. "I suppose I've been making a living out of this from a very early age." While studying at the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain, Craig made his professional acting debut at 16 in a Shakespeare production, quickly establishing himself as one of Britain's finest young actors. Craig was 32 when he was cast as James Bond in 2006's "Casino Royale" — a role that would forever change his life. He played 007 in four more films, including his 2021 Bond swan song, "No Time To Die."

There's no argument that Bond has been Craig's signature role — not surprising since he holds the record as the longest-running 007, portraying him for 15 years. But those spy films, as iconic as they are, represent a fraction of Craig's cinematic output, which is far more diverse and expansive. Those roles have run the gamut, ranging from a shrewd Southern-fried detective (who apparently took diction lessons from Foghorn Leghorn) to a real-life murderer who inspired a literary classic to a gunslinger battling an extraterrestrial invasion, and more. Read on to discover the 12 best Daniel Craig roles that aren't 007.

In 2001, Craig made the jump from British indie to Hollywood blockbuster with a role alongside Angelina Jolie in "Tomb Raider." He followed that project with a prestige film, director Sam Mendes' 2000 drama "Road to Perdition." Boasting an all-star cast that included Tom Hanks, Paul Newman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jude Law, and Stanley Tucci. Craig played Connor Rooney, the volatile, loose-cannon son of Newman's fearsome mob boss, John Rooney. As Craig divulged during an interview with The Hollywood Reporter's Awards Chatter podcast, Mendes cast him personally. "He went, 'I'm doing a gangster movie in Chicago. I want you to play Paul Newman's son,'" Craig said. "I [didn't] need to hear anymore." But when he flew to Chicago to audition for Mendes, it did not go well. "I did his reading, and [Mendes] said, 'That was terrible, but I'm going to give you the part because you've come all this way,'" Craig added.

Facing off with screen legend Newman in what wound up being his final screen performance was heady stuff for Craig. "I look back on it now, and I just go, 'My goodness me, that was a moment when things changed for me,'" he recalled in an interview with CBS Sunday Morning. "Not about my status or my recognition. Something within me went, 'I am allowed to sit at this table.'"

Craig graduated to leading roles in movies, yet he was happy to take a supporting part in 2005's "Munich" to work with the film's director, Steven Spielberg. "Munich" follows a covert operation launched by the Israeli government in retribution for the assassination of 11 Israeli athletes and their coach during the 1972 Olympics in Munich at the hands of a Palestinian militant group known as Black September. Eric Bana stars as Avner, appointed by Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir (Lynn Cohen) to head the top-secret revenge mission. His top-tier team includes Robert (Mathieu Kassovitz), a munitions expert, Carl (Ciaran Hinds), the "cleaner," and Hans (Hanns Zischler), an expert forger. The team is rounded out by Craig's character, Steve, a South African brought in to serve as driver and trigger man.

"Steve at first is very gung ho," said Craig. The men face a moral dilemma as they commit atrocities to avenge the murdered athletes. "As the movie goes on... We see the fact that these are just human beings.. He suffers, because of the terrible things that they begin to do, and the terrible acts that they have to commit to fulfilling the job they've taken on." 

In his first film after the release of "Casino Royale," Craig teamed up with Nicole Kidman for the sci-fi thriller "The Invasion." The film is a loose remake of the sci-fi horror classic "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." Kidman plays psychiatrist Carol Bennell, who makes the horrifying discovery that an extraterrestrial epidemic has been changing people's personalities and behavior. Craig portrays Dr. Ben Driscoll, who helps her try to stop the alien virus from spreading. 

Ultimately, critics deemed "The Invasion" a failure and a commercial flop. Still, Craig did admirable work portraying a doctor trying to convince the medical establishment that their new strain of flu is actually an alien invasion. Speaking with interviewer Emmanuel Levy, "The Invasion" director Oliver Hirschbiegel praised Craig's performance in the film. "I felt so fortunate to have Daniel in the role of Ben," he said. "He naturally conveyed all the facets of his character: all the toughness, the intelligence, and the tenderness that makes you see why Carol relies on Ben so much. Daniel also has a wicked sense of humor. I had a great time working with him."

Stieg Larsson's "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" was a bestseller with a global following when Craig joined the American film adaptation opposite Rooney Mara in 2011. Mara played the titular tattooed girl, punk-ish computer hacker Lisbeth Salander. Craig portrays crusading journalist Mikael Blomkvist, aided by Lisbeth. The pair tries to uncover the circumstances behind the mysterious disappearance of the 16-year-old niece of a wealthy industrialist (Christopher Plummer) 40 years earlier. As predicted, the David Fincher-directed film was a box-office hit that garnered largely positive reviews. 

While promoting the movie, Craig told The Sun why he felt the film was an important one to make (via Digital Spy). "This movie deals with forbidden or difficult subject matters," Craig explained. "It deals with violence towards women, it touches upon Nazism, and all the suppression of Nazism in a country where maybe there hasn't been a lot of discussions. And it's those subject matters that interest me." During that same interview, Craig delved into what he found particularly interesting about playing the character of Blomkvist. "He's flawed, he's an egotist, but he's got a very strong moral center. His ego gets in the way, I think, sometimes. Maybe he's got a Jesus Christ complex, like most men. And that's his downfall."

Expectations were sky high when it was first announced that Craig would be co-starring with screen legend Harrison Ford in "Cowboys & Aliens," a sci-fi western film from Jon Favreau, director of Hollywood hits like "Iron Man" and "The Mandalorian." Craig plays Jake Lonergan, an outlaw who awakens with a strange piece of alien tech on his wrist with no memory of how it got there. Jake figures out that extraterrestrial hardware can blast out powerful bursts of energy. This comes in handy when he finds himself facing off against cutthroat cattle baron Col. Woodrow Dollarhyde (Ford) and his army of henchmen — and even handier when the warring humans find themselves becoming uneasy allies forced to band together to fend off an alien invasion.

Reviews were decidedly mixed, but even the negative critiques singled out Craig and Ford for their solid performances. "The acting from the large cast is of a high standard, Craig and Ford were more or less born into their roles," wrote Roger Ebert, while Salon's Andrew O'Hehir wrote that "Daniel Craig makes a terrific western drifter in the Eastwood mold, with no name and no past, and he doesn't look, sound or act anything like James Bond." While the film pulled in more than $174 million at the box office, the film was nonetheless considered to be a flop, given that its budget was a hefty $163 million.

Craig was in the midst of ending his participation in the Bond franchise just as he jumped into another — or at least that's how it turned out when he accepted the role of Southern detective Benoit Blanc in "Knives Out," director Rian Johnson's Rubik's Cube of a whodunit. In "Knives Out," Blanc investigates the murder of a wealthy mystery novelist (Christopher Plummer), with his greedy children and their grasping spouses emerging as suspects. Craig returned for the sequel, 2022's "Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery," which featured a new cast and an even more convoluted mystery for Blanc to solve. Part Columbo, part Foghorn Leghorn, Blanc's Southern charm and bourbon-dripping drawl often allows him to be underestimated by those he's investigating. Craig told Netflix's Tudum that developing Blanc's accent was key to creating the character. "There's a touch of Tennessee Williams in there," Craig explained. "There's a touch of the historian Shelby Foote. It's trying to create something that's a bit otherworldly."

Craig will revive the character for a third "Knives Out" movie. He considers being able to leap from one successful franchise into another a blessing. "I can't believe my luck, I spent 17 years of my life doing that other thing which has been glorious and wonderful, and for this role to fall into my lap, I couldn't have expected it," Craig told the "Happy Sad Confused" podcast.