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Daniel Craig Leaves Bond Behind in 'Defiance'
by Jordan Riefe
 After stepping into the shoes of James Bond for Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace, plus roles in The Invasion and The Golden Compass in between, you couldn't fault Daniel Craig for taking a much deserved break. On the heels of Quantum of Solace, Craig is back on the big screen in director Ed Zwick's latest film, Defiance, playing one of three Jewish brothers who escape Nazi-occupied Poland during World War II into the forests of Belarus where they attempt to build a community among Russian resistance fighters in an effort to save their lives. After the glitzy action of the Bond franchise, Daniel Craig's latest role comes with a level of seriousness deeper than the layers of 007 given the murderous atrocities against Jews at the hands of the Nazis.
With Defiance hitting theaters on December 31, we were on hand at the film's junket in Beverly Hills in early December as Daniel Craig sat down with journalists to talk about his research for the project, his chemistry with co-stars Liev Schreiber and Jamie Bell, what the real life Bielski brothers were up against, what he would have done in their challenging circumstances, and how he feels about the Bond franchise as a business.
It isn’t often times we talk about male chemistry on stage.
DANIEL CRAIG: That’s right.
You and Liev [Schreiber], can you talk about how do find that?
CRAIG: You never know it’s going to be there and you can only hope that you click on some level, and you just try and make something happen. But, in fact, it was a lot easier than that. We had about a week, I think, of just sort of hanging around together. We were doing some rehearsals but there wasn’t much time. It was sort of costume fittings and stuff. We got into each others' faces, I think, with what you do, and we just kind of tried to make some contact. We tried to make a connection. And that sort of spilled over into the set. And with Jamie [Bell] and Liev and I sort of making that unit, we just - I mean, brothers sort of beat the shit out of the each other most of the time. And we were sort of doing that metaphorically and physically.
Any reasons why it took the project so long to get off the ground?
 CRAIG: We’ve been sort of talking for a few years about doing something. And last year he contacted me and said he’s got the script. He didn’t want to tell me what it was about. He just wanted to say that it was a labor of love for him and that he had been on it for a long while. You know, send it to me and see what I think. And I read it and immediately wanted to do it.
How do you create the character? Do you go in look into the history or do you just...
CRAIG: No, I spent most of last year reading about this and therefore discussing it with Ed [Zwick] and other people who were involved just sort of getting their opinions. And we just soaked up the stories and soaked up the ideas and obviously the script is a condensed set of a chain of events. I mean, all these things didn’t happen within that year. But the idea was to space it within that year to show a good indication of what happened over the three and a half years, however long that it was that they were actually in the forest.
I know that the one surviving brother, I think he’s in jail, so...
CRAIG: No, he beat the rap.
But there were other survivors of the community that you were able to talk to?
CRAIG: There was a screening a couple of weeks ago in New York for the survivors and their families and so - I don’t remember how many people went to see that, but it was a good crowd, which I missed. It was in New York, but the sort of offspring of the Bielskis came to the set for a week and sat with us and laughed with us, and sort of got a bit drunk with us. And they went off and did a bit of sightseeing for themselves, and so we connected. So that was - Well, it was very inspiring. I mean, they were sort of full of life. And these big guys came and had to be told to be quiet, because they kept on disturbing the takes, but it was just because they’re very rambunctious people.
Everyone would like to think they would do the heroic thing in a situation like this in real life. What do you think you would do?
 CRAIG: I have no idea. No idea. I mean, I can’t imagine myself or anybody else in a situation like that, really, deep down. I mean, it’s just horrendous. Of course, I’d like to think I’d do the right things. I mean, that’s what we’d all think. But who knows? I mean, what’s so remarkable about this - about this story - is that I think the instinct of the brothers and certainly of Tuvia, the way we play it is that all he wants to do is run away and hide. I mean, and why wouldn’t you? And people did do that. There were many stories of people who hide out sort of literally in holes in the ground for the remainder of the war. And the forest we were filming in is close to where it actually happened. You can imagine people scraping a living down there and actually just sort of surviving. But they didn’t do that. They picked more than that. He created a community and they existed on a really, sort of on a proper level.
When you take a leading role in a film like this, what do you have to do to make sure that people don’t see you as James Bond?
CRAIG: I don’t do anything. I just get on with my job. I mean, if I made a conscious effort to disguise myself, it would look a bit odd. What I have to do is, you have to sort of take on the - let the audience watch it. The experience the audience is having hopefully will take over and they won’t think about it. But I can’t wear a beard or start dying my hair for just no apparent reason. It’s not the way I work.
And doing the research that you did, and the variety of different people that you talk to and your sources, is there one theme or one thing that they all said that was pervasive?
CRAIG: About?
About this entire thing.
 CRAIG: That’s quite a general question. No. There isn’t one general summing up of this situation because it’s way too complicated. But that’s what attracted me to this story. They walk a very fine moral line, these people, and they committed crimes and they hurt people and they probably murdered people. The outcome is plain to see, twelve hundred people walked out. And the journey there is what interested me about how they got to that point. And this is what this film, for me, was the most attractive thing. Is that these people, they did bad things. But that’s one of the reasons I think that it hasn’t sort of been talked about for this length of time. I think you find that most people who went through horrific circumstances suffer things like survival guilt and they suffer things like remorse, and they don’t want to think about it. And unless you’ve been given sort of a - I mean, allowed to sort of talk about it and get it through your system and sort of have a cathartic experience, people would rather forget.
They organized a society on a socialist level, in the movie at least. I’m wondering how true is that to real life and how well did that system work for them?
CRAIG: Jesus Christ, how well does the socialist system work?
How well did it work for them?
CRAIG: Well, I mean I think that - Sorry, I’m just [trying to think] but they actually became communist. I mean, the situation was very clear - in the forest there were Russian partisans who formed guerilla units fighting the Germans. And of course they were working for the greater good of the Communist Party and the Russian system. I think they form in a very basic level, a community, but has very hard and fast rules. I don’t think you can label it. I really don’t. I think it’s a very basic form of existence. They had no money. They had nothing. They had to trade. They built. They worked. They built workshops. They made things. They traded with the Russian partisans. They traded with the local community, and they stole. And they balanced it out.
But they also, politically, had to keep the local communists really happy because the communists couldn’t give a f*ck about them. They would have been quite happy, gone in there and wiped them out because they were a pain in the ass. Twice a year they’d have these huge parties for the Communist party where there they would wave red flags. And all the kids are dressed up in red costumes and they all dance around and then they’d push them away and they’d give them another six months. I mean, it was literally that. So I don’t think you can say that there was a system they were working to. It was purely survival.
Maybe in a contemporary context it’s harder to understand what they were up against.
 CRAIG: Well I think, no. Of course we don’t, really, deep down. But there is something. There, is one of the reasons why stories like this are still crucially important. I mean, for me, just doing a movie about the second World War it’s obviously filled with pitfalls, because you’re going to hit a well trodden ground, because obviously we’ve had many films about the subject. But no one’s really dealt with this. And that was one of the reasons it struck me. But it’s recent history. 20 million people died in the second World War. It’s shaped the way we live our lives. Genocide was supposed to come to an end at the end of second World War, rules were made.
World rules were made to hopefully stop it happening anywhere within the world, and we’ve broken it ever since. So I kind of feel that writing stories about people who survive it - actually, these stories that come out are important to remember. I mean, and we will be, the next 30, 40 years, I’m sure we’ll be having films about Iraq and about Afghanistan and stories that are going to move us in ways that we never thought we could be moved about survival, about the atrocities that have happened. It’s an important part of the process. I mean, we have to remember these things. I’m an actor, I only know one way of doing it; remembering them and just sort of put into a drama.
While you were on the set, did you guys do anything in the rehearsal process to get to know each other? Was there something you guys [did], like all went out to the bar and get drunk?
CRAIG: We got drunk all the time. We were drunk all the time. It’s very cold. It was, obviously. I mean, listen, one of the things that occurred was we were filming right in the middle of a forest here. And about a mile away were our trailers here down a dirt track. Now we could of sort of sat here and we could of said, 'Okay, my shot’s over. I’m going to go back to my trailer and sit in there.' In fact, we didn’t. We were on set twelve hours a day, everyday, and we just took part and allowed us to take part in the process of - I mean, sometimes we were chasing the light. It’s all shot in natural light. There are no lamps. There’s nothing. So literally the sun came out we went, ‘Oh f*ck, we got to go over here. And move!’ So everything was moved and allowed [for] open rehearsals so everybody could have an opinion and everybody gets involved. Through being damp, wet and cold, and miserable at times, we kind of bonded together.
What you were saying before...
 CRAIG: And alcohol.
That wasn’t stage vodka.
CRAIG: God no, that would have...
But they did drink a lot, did they not?
CRAIG: Well, it was cold.
Is that something that was involved in the rehearsal process where some people had a different viewpoint on what they’re character might have done?
CRAIG: I’m not so sure that that’s the case with it. I’m sure people did have different opinions, but it was very much the story. In very many respects it is very clear cut, but it’s finding the nuances and finding the different attitudes. What’s interesting is we have a character who obviously - I mean, the reality is that these people came out of the ghetto, were useless to anybody. Useless. They couldn’t fight, they couldn’t defend themselves. They were women, children, old people and might as well have been left to die. But they genuinely - you know that the options were very limited for obvious reasons.
The ghetto was destroying everything that they had. Destroying their souls. Destroying who they were. And actually getting out into the forest allowed them to sort of live. But they were from all walks of life. I mean, they literally were from all walks of life - doctors, nurses, lawyers, whoever, but all with one common theme, which is they’ve lost just about everything and everybody, so that sort of brought them together. And I think that those differences are actually what we probably played upon a little bit and tried to kind of bring those out. So we made sure that there was a little bit of - whatever you call it.
In Lithuania there must have been people around that had their recollections?
CRAIG: We didn’t have a lot of conversations about it. I mean, the thing is - I can’t remember the numbers, but it’s something like twenty thousand, I think, within a week were murdered. I mean, it’s right there. There’s a mass grave that was - it’s actually quite difficult to find, but it was about five or six kilometers down the road from where we were shooting. So it’s kind of as raw as it could possibly be. And there’s the Jewish community in Lithuania, as well as everywhere else in that part of Europe, was devastated, if not totally annihilated. So it was important to be there. I mean, it's kind of how it informs the film. Being in that place and filming in that place was just crucial, I think.
Is becoming Bond like becoming part of a business?
 CRAIG: I’m not a business person. I’m an actor. I’m a terrible business person.
Do you feel a responsibility when you align yourself with them?
CRAIG: It’s just work. I mean, it’s just ups, it’s just work. It’s part of what the job is. If you take on a job and you look at it, and you look and say, 'Well, what do I have to do for this job?' Then you do it. I approached it in just the same way as I approached any other piece of work I’d ever done. And the responsibility is obviously there, but there’s no more responsibility than I would actually apply to any of the other jobs I do. But it obviously, it takes six months to shoot a Bond movie. It takes two and half months to promote it. It’s two years of my life, of course, but I don’t change my attitude towards it. I just plan differently.
How do you view the success?
CRAIG: I’m very happy about it.
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