Daniel Craig is not a particularly fragile man, what with his mysterious eyes, ripped James Bond redefining the character and upcoming, rough and tumble western, “Cowboys and Aliens” epic ready to burst into theaters. But even he, this steely-gazed Brit, was taken aback when he was allowed into David Fincher’s editing room.
Fincher, director of Craig’s upcoming English-language adaptation of “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo,” shocked his star with what he put on screen — and what he didn’t (no small task, considering both the racy content of the book, and the fact that Craig was there on set).
“It’s as adult as you can possibly make it,” Craig tells Esquire, the cover of which he graces this month. “This is adult drama. I grew up, as we f*cking all did, watching The Godfather and that, movies that were made for adults. And this is a $100 million R-rated movie. Nobody makes those anymore. And Fincher, he’s not holding back. They’ve given him free rein. He showed me some scenes recently, and my hand was over my mouth, going, Are you f*cking serious?”
It’s atually pleasant to hear that, given Hollywood’s tendency to neuter controversy — especially when it’s anticipating a hit. The book is filled with cyber punk torture and violence, but it is more than the considerable violence and nudity that shocked Craig.
“It’s not that he simply showed me footage that was horribly graphic. It was stuff that was happening, or had happened. And somehow you don’t see it,” he says. “There’s more than one way to sense violence. Much more powerful ways than seeing it step-by-step.”
