Daniel Craig on bidding Bond goodbye in 'No Time to Die'

'No Time to Die,' which opens in the U.S. on Friday after a 16-month delay due to the pandemic, is the last hurrah in Daniel Craig's celebrated Bond era, a stewardship that saw Craig remake and emotionally deepen the once retrograde superspy -- with more than US$3 billion in box office along the way.

But Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson insisted. No, he was the one. He was James Bond.

Craig, then a rising performer but far from the expected choice, never had any ambitions to play James Bond. He had assumed he was being strung along as part of a massive casting machine, one of dozens of actors screen tested.

"Once I did find out, I was incredibly flattered and deeply confused," Craig recalled in an interview. "I just felt like I wasn't the right person."

Fifteen years and five films later, Craig's tenure as 007 is coming to a close. "No Time to Die," which opens in the U.S. on Friday after a 16-month delay due to the pandemic, is the last hurrah in Craig's celebrated Bond era, a stewardship that saw Craig remake and emotionally deepen the once retrograde superspy -- with more than $3 billion in box office along the way. Once derisively labeled "Blond Bond," Craig turned out to be a smash success.