It's not easy being Bond. Not only do you have to be slick, suave and quick witted, you also have to perform a lot of intense stunts that could potentially leave you injured. Daniel Craig is an expert on this, having endured many aches and pains over the course of his 14-year stint as Bond, in parts of the body you probably haven't even heard of.
While filming Quantum Of Solace, he tore the labrum (the connecting cartilage, for those of us without a degree in medicine) in his right shoulder while performing a stunt in an aircraft, only to then hit it again when jumping through a window and straight into a wall in Italy. “I was just nervous and overcooked it,” he explains in our April cover story. “At that point, my arm was kind of useless.”
Then, on the shoot for Skyfall, it was his legs' turn to take a hit. Not long into filming, Craig managed to rupture both of his calf muscles, which meant he had to fit rehab in a swimming pool around the shooting schedule. Ouch. Still, for Craig it was all a case of mind over matter. “It’s not about recovery, because you know you can recover. It’s about psychologically thinking that you’re going to do it again.”
While that might sound bad, it was on Spectre that Craig met his breaking point. This time his anterior cruciate ligament (a key ligament in the knee joint) that took the blow. While fighting with former professional wrestler Dave Baustista in March 2015, he literally heard it snap and had to spend the rest of the shoot wearing a knee brace, which was then removed in the editing process. “I was like, ‘Dave, throw me, for Christ’s sake,’ because he was being light with me,” he says, looking back at the incident. “So he threw me and, God bless him, he just left my knee over there.”
All future 007 hopefuls should probably start preparing for the physical toll it might take on their bodies as soon as possible.
Read the full interview with Daniel Craig here now.
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