Bollywood Baatein: Is Daniel Craig the best James Bond ever?

After doing 8 films as James Bond, Daniel Craig owns 007 in the way none of his predecessors, except Sean Connery could. What would Bond be without Craig? We don’t know yet who the new Bond will be. But we now have the luscious Jamaican actress Lashana Lynch chipping in as the new 007.

Would it be correct to assume Lashana would be the next Bond? Frankly that would be disastrous. There is something distinctly annoying about Ms Lashana.

Or is the new Bond going to have a new number: 069 perhaps?

I am more worried about what Daniel Craig is going to do with his career after Bond than who is going to play the next Bond. Although Daniel Craig is the best Bond for my bucks, Sean Connery was a better actor than Craig. It took him years to get out of Bond’s shadows and play other characters successfully in films like The Wind & The Lion, Robin & Marian, The Name of The Rose, The Hunt For Red October, Family Business, Untouchables and Finding Forrester.

Connery’s career ended on a disastrous note with The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen in 2003 where our own Naseeruddin Shah shared screen space with Connery.

Recalls Naseer, “All us co-actors were certainly in awe of Sean but he never displayed any sign of entitled behaviour. He didn't need to, he was perfectly happy sitting around in his undershirt sans his wig with us all and scratching himself and breaking wind!”

Unlike other self-centred stars, Sean Connery actually took genuine interest in the lives of his colleagues. Says Naseer, “He often asked us things about ourselves, which was touching. Celebrities are never interested in others. They're always waiting to be asked things about themselves and are happy to hold forth about themselves even if not asked! Sean was an exception.”

***

I think Daniel Craig will find it much harder than Connery to go beyond Bond. For one, Craig, for all his dazzle as a superstar, is not as great an actor as Connery. He has scored a big success outside the boundaries of Bond with the recent whodunit Knives Out. But if the truth be told it was his charm rather than acting chops that saw him conquer the box office in Knives Out.

Significantly Daniel Craig has only the sequel to Knives Out in the pipeline. No one has yet offered him something as challenging as Connery’s Medicine Man. Would he able to go beyond Bond like Connery did? Or will his career be buried with Bond, like Roger Moore, Pierce Brosnan and poor Timothy Dalton?