n the high-stakes arena of the fall movie season, you don't have to be an experienced gambler to calculate the odds against casting Daniel Craig, 38, as the sixth James Bond in Casino Royale.

  Daniel who? That's the first problem. Most moviegoers had never heard of this accomplished British actor before October, 2005, when it was announced that he would be the new, super-suave Agent 007 on Her Majesty's Secret Service.

  "Daniel and I know each other and I wish him all the greatest success and happiness with the role. He's a wonderful, accomplished actor. I think he'll fly high and far and wide with it," graciously acknowledged his immediate predecessor Pierce Brosnan. Brosnan told Tribute he definitely plans to see the movie. "Of course I am going to go. Way to go Daniel… don't let the bastards get you down!"

  Brosnan, of course, is referring to some critical fan reaction that pale, blue-eyed Daniel Craig who-at 5-foot-11-is the shortest and first fair-haired actor in the franchise fraternity, may not be up to snuff following Brosnan, Timothy Dalton, Roger Moore, George Lazenby and the venerable Sean Connery. But does it really matter?

  "I watched every single Bond movie three or four times, taking in everything I could about how the character had been portrayed in the past then threw all that away once I started doing the role," Craig told Entertainment Weekly. "There's no point in making this movie unless it's different. It'd be a waste of time unless we took Bond to a place he'd never been before."

  That's just where Casino Royale seems to be headed when it opens on November 17th.  Determined to make the 21st feature film of the

series younger, darker and more hip, director Martin Campbell and producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson (Broccoli's half-brother and stepson of the franchise's late cofounder Albert "Cubby" Broccoli) decided that this latest installment would have "more character, less gadgets" than previous Bond films. Instead, it's all about how Bond became Bond in the first place, his first
mission.

  "The thing about James Bond is that each actor who has filled the role has brought his own style and imprint," notes Campbell, who had directed Brosnan in GoldenEye.

  "One of the reasons it has remained so popular is because it has changed over the years. It's been recast and reinvented several times. With Daniel Craig as our new Bond, I am thrilled to return to shepherd the new 007 in the new Bond adventure. Casino Royale is tougher and grittier than previous 007 films. It's where he earns is 00 stripes and license to kill."

  Indeed, author Ian Fleming created James Bond as a man who could commit acts of violence with little conscience or soul-searching. Fleming wanted Bond to be chameleon-like, an enigma, describing the spy as being "not unattractive," and having "a cruelty about his mouth."

  "There will still be special effects, but they won't be obvious to the audience," says detail-oriented producer Michael G. Wilson. "We have great action sequences, a lot of things blowing up, but not space effects or things disappearing or invisible cars."

  Retaining some significant traditions in Casino Royale, Bond will create his signature martini and drive an Aston Martin‚ but he will not smoke. The new Bond girl, Vesper Lynd, is played by Eva Green, a French actress whose screen credits include Bernardo Bertolucci's steamy, erotic drama The Dreamers and Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven. The evil villain Le Chiffre is Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen (King Arthur).

  Another Bond seductress, Solange, is played by Italian actress Caterina Murino, who maintains, "Daniel is a great actor. He gives to this character something we never saw before. When he's going to kill someone, he looks like a real killer. When he kisses me, when he makes love, he's so sexy. You never saw a James Bond like this. This James Bond doesn't look like a little cartoon like before, like the last one, or so charming and playful like the first James Bond. This is new."

  The only returning "regular" is Dame Judi Dench, as the cool, scheming M. (More of her back story will be revealed this time.) The venerable 71-year-old actress insists her co-star has what it takes to pull off the part, noting, "I hate how people have been attacking Daniel Craig. It's despicable and it disgusts me. He is a fine actor. He brings something new and edgy to the role. His critics will be proved wrong."

  As for those rampant rumors, Martin Campbell scoffs, "No, his teeth didn't get knocked out in a fight sequence. What happened was that one of his caps came loose while we were filming in Prague. A local dentist came to the set, put a bit of glue on it, and that was that. The whole thing took 10 minutes."

  "That story about (Craig) not being able to drive a stick shift was ludicrous," adds Barbara Broccoli. "Everybody drives a stick shift in England. You have to be able to in order to get an unrestricted license over there. The tabloids come up with these stupid stories. Almost everything they've written about this movie has been wrong."

  Before Craig's name was announced, London odds makers were touting Hugh Jackman, Colin Farrell, Orlando Bloom, Jude Law, Christian Bale, Clive Owen, Russell Crowe and Ewan McGregor. Then, slowly but surely, one-by-one, they all dropped out of contention.

  It seems Barbara Broccoli had seen this British actor named Daniel Craig as the middle-class drug dealer in Layer Cake and she immediately became convinced he was the perfect choice. "He's everything Bond should be. He's sexy and charming and virile, but he can also be dangerous."

  In the meantime, Craig has been busy honing his craft, playing Paul Newman's jealous, petulant son in Road to Perdition, Gwyneth Paltrow's domineering poet husband Ted Hughes in Sylvia and an Israeli agent, the impassioned getaway driver, in Steven Spielberg's Munich.

  He also completed Infamous, another Truman Capote biopic in which he plays Kansas-based serial killer Perry Smith and The Visiting, a politically-undertoned remake of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, in which he co-stars with Nicole Kidman, scheduled for release in 2007.

  Craig was working on The Visiting in Baltimore when he got the call informing him that he'd been cast as Bond. "My first reaction was I needed a drink," he admits.

  Understandably, Craig had some initial reluctance about becoming the pivotal spy. After all, it took Sean Connery, the initial James Bond, more than a decade to escape the tuxedo-clad shadow of the character after his run ended, and the leading-man days of Roger Moore and Timothy Dalton essentially ended along with their tenures in the series. George Lazenby, whose one appearance was in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, never came near to achieving that level of recognition again. Even Pierce Brosnan wisely created his own production company, Irish DreamTime, founded with producer Beau St. Clair, to develop a post-Bond plan long before his tenure ended.

  Craig is, in fact, the first James Bond to be born after the death of author Ian Fleming in 1964 and the first to be born after the start of the film series. "I had long debates with my friends," Craig admits. "Some of them were telling me I'd never be able to do anything else. That's a valid concern, right? I mean, I'd love to go on to win Oscars and have my acting applauded by my peers. And, honestly, I never really thought about playing James Bond. It was not one of my ambitions. But I was given this choice, a choice that might take me someplace I had never really thought about going, but that might not be such a bad place to go. So I asked myself, "What else am I going to do?' What else do I have planned for myself?'"

  Besides, he has already come a long way. Born on March 2, 1968, in Chester, Chestershire, England, Craig auditioned at the National Youth Theatre on their tour in Manchester at 16. "I always wanted to be an actor," he says. "I had the arrogance to believe I couldn't be anything else."

  His first break came in the miniseries Our Friends in the North. "I thought I could earn a s%*tload of money doing television," Craig recalls. "I'll have a house in Portugal. I'll be an alcoholic and I'll be fat, and in 10 years, it'll all be over. That's when I went, I don't want to do that! I want to make movies.'"

  One thing Craig will not discuss is his personal life or his marriage (1992-1994) to Scottish actress Fiona Loudon which ended in divorce but produced a daughter Ella (born in 1992): "It's bad manners," he says dismissively. As for his short-lived romance with supermodel Kate Moss and his liaison with party girl Sienna Miller, not long after "Nannygate," he has a terse, "No comment." He is currently dating American movie producer Satsuki Mitchell.

  "It's not my cause in life to be filthy rich," Craig goes on. "Being comfortable is enough. If money comes along, I'll take it. I just want good scripts that try to make you think. Now that I'm into this Bond thing, I know it's what I want to do, and that's a huge weight off my shoulders."

  For the record, Craig says his favorite previous Bond film was Goldfinger and his favorite Bond girl was Diana Rigg, who co-starred in On Her Majesty's Secret Service. His preference for martinis is neither shaken nor stirred, but straight up. And his all-time favorite Bond? Sean Connery.

- Robin Marchbank