Daniel Craig is the actor who stripped James Bond down to muscle and damage and made the franchise feel urgent again. He broke through with Layer Cake (2004) and went on to a career that spans Casino Royale (2006), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011), Skyfall (2012), and Knives Out (2019). His sixteen-year run as 007 stands as the most dramatically ambitious era in the Bond series, and his exit in No Time to Die (2021) drew the kind of audience grief reserved for characters who felt genuinely inhabited.

On screen, Craig hits with a physical bluntness that other actors have to work toward. The thick neck, the steel-blue eyes, and a face assembled from hard angles photograph best when the material has weight behind it. He has settled into his post-Bond years with a looseness that suits him, and the Benoit Blanc films show an actor who can be funny and strange and magnetic all at once.