Comments on Daniel Craig

COMMENTS FROM DANIEL'S MOTHER... "My Daniel is on the Road to Stardom" (excerpts - by Emma Johnson, Liverpool Echo 2002) But the woman who helped inspire Daniel Craig as he grew up in Wirral is not at all surprised at his acting success. "It was all he ever wanted to do," explains his mother Carol Blond. "And I was somehow always quite sure he'd make it. "It wasn't just a mother thing, he was just so determined I knew it was the only thing he could do." Now 58 and living with third husband Max Blond in Hoylake, Carol cultivated the young Daniel's interest in acting after she moved with him and sister Lia from Frodsham to Wirral following the break-up of her marriage to Daniel's former merchant seaman father, Tim. Confessing to being a bit " stagestruck" herself, she took her son to plays at The Everyman and to meet the actors. It caught on, Carol says: "He was always performing, I would catch him tap dancing in school outside the offices." On a cruise to the Norweigan Fjords with grandparents Olwyn and Doris Williams and aged just eight, he devised and performed a show for all on board. Three seasons acting with the National Youth Theatre ensured that by the time Daniel left Hilbre High School at 16 there was only one career for him. But it wasn't easy. After applying to LAMDA, RADA, The Young Vic and the Guild Hall School of Music and Drama, he was finally accepted at his preferred choice, the Guild Hall, on his third attempt. "He had a rough time of it down in London," his mother says of the time he spent waiting on tables to make ends meet. Shakespeare and theatre work followed before his acting breakthrough in the Morgan Freeman movie "The Power Of One" and later TV's "Our Friends In The North." "I am impressed that he's managed to be successful on the screen and on stage," she says. "I always thought if he could make it in British theatre he would be secure for life." Carol doesn't expect Daniel's turn in the spotlight to affect her privacy-loving son too much though. She says: "He has quietly been doing very well for a long long time." "And he has been able to enjoy life. Fortunately fame has come at a time when he is old and wise enough to handle it." "I am just happy to see him doing well in his job and part of that job happens to be that he's famous."

COMMENTS FROM DANIEL'S FATHER... "The Boy Dan Good: Early Days of 'Road to Perdition's' Brit Star" (By Charles Yates, The Sun 9/23/02) MOST actors would kill to star alongside Hollywood legend Paul Newman. British actor Daniel Craig does just that as the hitman son of Newman's godfather character in new gangster movie "Road To Perdition." Sam Mendes' film, which teams Newman with Tom Hanks and Jude Law, is destined to be one of the biggest blockbusters of the year. And it is Daniel, 34, - probably best known here for TV's Our Friends In The North - who has won most of the plaudits in America where the film has just opened, taking Pounds 65 million. Family and friends were full of praise for the actor yesterday as they recalled his own road to stardom. His father Tim is his biggest fan - as well as his harshest critic. Tim watched approvingly as the film had its star-studded premiere and says: "I am proud of what he's done but I'm very critical of his acting too. If I don't think it's great I'll tell him straight." "I am also proud because he is my mate. I taught him to drink." "There's not many things nicer than standing at the bar with someone you love and who loves you that much." Daniel's earliest dreams of stage stardom were honed in a bar when Tim and his mum Carol ran the picturesque Ring O' Bells boozer in Frodsham, Cheshire. Tim, 59, says: "I remember having some musician friends over and little Daniel was weaving in and out of their legs. "One asked him what he was going to do when he grew up and without breaking stride he said, 'Be an actor.' "I remember at the time blinking and doing a double-take because he said it with such certainty and he was so small." But he was right. "Road To Perdition" was Craig's second UK premiere in a week. Tonight is the preview performance of stage show "A Number," by Stephen Daldry. The play, which opens at at The Royal Court Theatre Downstairs in West London on Thursday, stars Daniel alongside Michael Gambon. Tim says that role would make his son just as proud as appearing with Newman and Hanks. "He's a big fan of Michael Gambon and would have given his left leg to do that stage part," he says. Tim believes Daniel is driven by his desire to be the best actor he can. He has already turned down offers to do a sequel to his Hollywood debut as Alex West in "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider" with Angelina Jolie. He says: "He is his own man and he's not driven by money. I know he has turned down serious cash to do other roles. He tells me that he's turned the parts down because he could never see himself standing up there and saying the words." Daniel was born on March 2, 1968, at 41 Liverpool Road, Chester, where former merchant seaman Tim, a steel erector, lived with young art teacher wife Carol. The midwife wrapped the newborn infant in a copy of 'The Guardian' before handing him to his parents. It was after moving to the Ring O' Bells that Daniel made his first stage performance, at Frodsham CofE Primary School. His old headmaster Peter Mason, 71, recalls: "Even at the ages of five and six it isn't very difficult to tell when someone has real ability and talent. We encouraged pupils to take part in prayers and to perform little plays in front of the parents. "Both Daniel and his older sister Lia were very good. I could tell even then that Daniel was gifted - I was sorry when they left the school." The children quit after Carol and Tim split up in 1972. Carol moved back in with her parents, who ran the Deva Hotel in nearby Chester. Tim met Shirley Lewis and the pair married in 1974. Shirley, who has also since split from Tim but still runs the Ring O' Bells, says: "Daniel was a fun loving youngster and was always being taken to the Everyman Theatre by his mum. He loved reading." Liverpool fan Daniel still visits the pub when he is back in the North West, once popping in with actress Alex Kingston when they were filming the telly costume drama "Moll Flanders" nearby. Daniel, acclaimed for his performance as Geordie in the 1996 BBC drama "Our Friends In The North," is shy when it comes to his background. But he has revealed that he has a ten-year-old daughter from a failed marriage. He now dates German actress Heike Makatsch, 31, and has a home in London. Shirley's nephew Anthony Lewis, 35, an illustrator for children's books in neighbouring Manley, recalls his earlier days. "Daniel was a lot of fun to be with. We'd play football or go to the zoo and he would come and sleep over. "I remember us all going to the movies together - but back then I never imagined that one day Daniel would be up there on screen." Another admirer from his school days is Trudy Kilpatrick, 31, now a receptionist at Hilbre High School, Newton, Wirral, where they were pupils in the Eighties. Trudy recalls: "He had ambition and you knew he was going to go on and do something. People looked up to him because he was a good actor and a few girls fancied him because he was so talented." Daniel's former school drama teacher, Brenda Davies, remembers her star pupil fondly. She says: "He came to an audition for Oliver with a friend but he wasn't due to audition for the part. He had a go - and got the role. "For me he was absolutely superb. It's fantastic that his career has taken off." The actor's mother Carol, who shares a house in Hoylake, Wirral with third husband Max Blond, says: "Acting is all he ever wanted to do from being a boy." Carol, a teacher at a comprehensive in Allerton, Liverpool, adds: "We are all very proud of what he has achieved - but he has worked hard to get there." After leaving school at 16 to join the National Youth Theatre, he got a place at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama alongside Ewan McGregor, Joseph Fiennes and ace mimic Alistair McGowan. Early successes included T S Eliot's "Murder In The Cathedral" in the Eighties. Dad Tim, who runs a recruitment agency in Chester, recalls: "I remember seeing him in his first National Youth Theatre production as Agamemnon in Shakespeare's Troilus And Cressida. "I was sat next to his mother who had encouraged him every step of the way like me. She was the real driving force." In his remote cottage in Shropshire, Tim and third wife Kirsty have a snap of Daniel on the living room wall with his screen dad Paul Newman at his side. Tim says: "It's a gift from the film set and it's great. But for me, seeing him on the stage in the National or at the Old Vic is a serious buzz." Tim is already looking forward to his son's next role as poet laureate Ted Hughes opposite Oscar-winning Gwyneth Paltrow as lover Sylvia Plath in a Pounds 7 million movie that starts filming in November. Head of BBC Films, David Thompson, says: "Ted Hughes is a difficult role to cast but we are confident that Daniel will be extraordinary. Not only is he a fine actor, he also has an incredibly strong magnetic screen presence." Daniel's new movie might be called "Road To Perdition" but the actor is now set firmly on his own road - to fame.