Daniel Craig confirmed that his next project is the upcoming 007 film.
Daniel Craig is heading for the next Bond set sooner than we might have thought. On Tuesday, the British star confirmed to the Associated Press that the upcoming 007 movie—his fifth in the franchise—will be his next film. Break out out your martinis and Omega watches, because Bond 25 is upon us.
Though he confirmed the Bond film is his next project lined up, Craig stayed quiet about whether or not Oscar-winning filmmaker Danny Boyle would direct the film. “We’ll see. We’ll see,” he responded.
Boyle himself confirmed last month that he was eyeing the next film, and was working on a script with Richard Curtis (Love Actually) and John Hodge (Trainspotting). “It all depends on that, really,” he told Variety. “We hope to start shooting that in six or seven weeks. Then Bond would be right at the end of the year.” This would be a dream come true for MGM, who has been eyeing Boyle for a Bond film for years now, but has yet to make an official announcement about the Slumdog Millionaire director’s participation.
Though Boyle will be a new entry to the franchise, this will be Craig’s fifth time suiting up for the character, which seems to get harder and harder for him with each film. The actor made headlines on his last Bond press tour in 2015, saying he’d rather “slash [his] wrists” than take up the mantle once more. He also added, for good measure, that if he did it, it would “only be for the money” and that he doesn’t “give a fuck” which actor comes next. The quotes instantly went viral and have since haunted Craig at every turn, on top of earning him a furious phone call from Gary Barber, MGM’s chief executive and chairman.
“Instead of saying something with style and grace, I said something really stupid,” Craig said in an interview with Stephen Colbert last year. He then confirmed that he had signed up for one more film.
“I just want to go out on a high note,” he said. “I can’t wait.”
And soon, his 007 curse will be broken. Craig can shuffle off the cuff links, the suits, the fancy little weapons, all the last vestiges of Bondism keeping him tethered to Britain’s most tireless franchise, passing it off to the next schmuck ready for instant worldwide fame and billion-dollar box-office glory.
Celebrities-Turned-Activists Throughout the Years
Audrey Hepburn
In 1989, Hepburn—who survived World War II in the Netherlands as a child—was appointed as an ambassador to UNICEF, and, as the organization mentions on its Web site, she made up to 15 speeches a day for the group on behalf of children in need around the world. In a 1988 Global News interview, Hepburn, who lived in Switzerland and out of the public eye, said that she didn’t have to think hard to take on this role to be an advocate for children. “I’m moving around the world once again, but I’m happy to do it, because for children, I’d go to the moon.”
By Peter Charlesworth/LightRocket/Getty Images.
Jane Fonda
Fonda was a vocal anti-war activist during the Vietnam War, sparking controversy with her infamous “Hanoi Jane” photograph. Since then, Fonda has been known for supporting and championing dozens of causes, including the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Power & Potential, for which she raised money at her big 80th birthday bash this past December. “If it didn’t make a difference for famous people to speak out, the right wing wouldn’t object. We are like repeaters,” she told Vanity Fair then. “Repeaters are the towers that you see at the top of mountains that pick up signals from the valley and carry them over the mountains to a broader audience. And that’s what celebrities do, if we’re doing our job right. We’re picking up the voices of people who can’t be heard and broadcasting their story.”
From Bettmann/Getty Images.
Harry Belafonte
The actor and singer, and friend of both Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy, has spoken up for civil rights and social causes for over 50 years. He helped organize the march at Selma in 1965, and even advised the organizers of the 2017 Women’s March. Now at the age of 91, he is encouraging Americans to keep their chins up in the Trump era. “I guess the thing that I most want to get to is that the best of us is still in front of us; the worst of us we’re experiencing,” he said at the Robert F. Kennedy Ripple of Hope Awards last December.
From Bettmann/Getty Images.
Elizabeth Taylor
When the Reagan administration did its best to ignore the AIDS crisis of the early 1980s, Taylor faced it. As Vanity Fair wrote in 2015, she reportedly ran an underground pharmaceuticals ring for AIDS medication out of her Bel Air mansion. “She was saving lives,” her friend Kathy Ireland said of the efforts. In 1991, she founded the Elizabeth Taylor Aids Foundation (E.T.A.F.) to provide grants to organizations that help those living with and affected by HIV and AIDS. Taylor was also a leading voice behind AmfAR, the foundation for AIDS research, and is still remembered as an advocate for the cause.
By Jeffrey Markowitz/Sygma/Getty Images.
Bono
In 2016, Bono made Fortune’s list of “World’s Greatest Leaders”—and it wasn’t the first time. He founded the (RED) project with Bobby Shriver in 2006, which was a continuation of his work on DATA (Debt, AIDS, Trade, Africa), to help raise awareness of AIDS and AIDS relief in Africa.
By Don Arnold/Getty Images.
Angelina Jolie
Since 2001, Jolie has worked with people in need in more than 30 countries, going on missions on behalf of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and even combining her advocacy with her filmmaking, as with her 2017 film, First They Killed My Father. Last year, she spoke in Geneva at the Sergio Vieira de Mello Foundation, where she left audience members with the message to “keep working determinedly and patiently” for change.
By Tom Stoddart/Getty Images.
Leonardo DiCaprio
DiCaprio has long been one of the famous environmentalists in Hollywood. He has the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, which he founded in 1998 and which focuses on a variety of climate and indigenous-rights issues. The Academy Award winner has even brought his Titanic pals into the environmental-activist mix. Both Kate Winslet and Billy Zane attended the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation’s annual auction in St. Tropez, France, in 2017. “Gang’s back together. Now we’re saving icebergs. Go figure . . .” Zane wrote.
From Getty Images.
Ashley Judd
Judd has been an ambassador for Population Services International (P.S.I.), which works on encouraging healthy behavior and the affordability of health products across the globe. Over the years, she has visited several areas that P.S.I. targets, including Thailand, Cambodia, and South Africa. Judd has elevated her voice as a political activist in recent years, both at the 2017 Women’s March and as part of the #MeToo movement, having spoken up about her alleged abuse at the hands of Harvey Weinstein. She also considered challengingMitch McConnell for his Senate seat in Kentucky in 2013, which really opens up a whole world of “what if?”
By SAJJAD HUSSAIN/AFP/Getty Images.
America Ferrera
When she helped open the Women’s March last January, Ferrera spoke about the importance of the resistance to the Trump administration. “We are gathered here and across the country and around the world today to say, ‘Mr. Trump, we refuse. We reject the demonization of our Muslim brothers and sisters,’” she said. Her organization, Harness, which she helped start after the 2016 election, helps bring together grassroots leaders in various communities to continue to make change and have important conversations about social issues in this political era.
By Theo Wargo/Getty Images.
Mark Ruffalo
In 2011, Ruffalo founded Water Defense, an organization that works to ban hydraulic fracturing in the state of New York. “Fracking is an extreme form of oil and gas extraction that leads to water contamination, air pollution, earthquakes, illness, exacerbates climate change, and turns communities upside down,” he wrote on the blog EcoWatch in 2016.
By D Dipasupil/Getty Images.
Ellen Page
After Page came out as gay in 2014, she became an active and vocal advocate for the L.G.B.T.Q. community, through Vice’s Gaycation series, as well as a loud voice for immigrants. At LAX last year, she posted videos during a protest of President Trump’s travel ban and was right up in the thick of things. “I am young, yes, but what I have learned is that love, the beauty of it, the joy of it, and yes, even the pain of it, is the most incredible gift to give and to receive as a human being,” she said during her coming-out speech. “And we deserve to experience love fully, equally, without shame and without compromise.”
By Kristina Bumphrey/StarPix/REX/Shutterstock.
George and Amal Clooney
The Clooney Foundation for Justice has supported a variety of causes in the past year, including bestowing a grant to the Southern Poverty Law Center following violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, last summer. The Clooneys most recently joined the March for Our Lives in Washington, D.C., and donated half a million dollars to the cause.
