If James Bond’s real life dad were a spy he'd probably be a very good one because he appears to stick to the old adage ‘loose lips sink ships’.
The Chronicle spoke briefly to Tim Craig, father of Chester-born 007 star Daniel Craig, about his son’s latest movie Spectre, which has broken all UK box office records since the London premiere.
Mr Craig senior, who works in Chester but lives in Shropshire, said Daniel ‘guards his privacy’ and repeated the agreement he has with his world famous son.
The businessman, who has a striking similarity to his offspring, previously told The Chronicle: “He doesn’t talk about me and I don’t talk about him, but naturally I am extremely proud of him as he is a very fine actor.”
But Tim, who is director of a recruitment company in his wife’s name, Kirsty Craig Associates, based at the Riverside Innovation Centre in Chester, did at least confirm he had seen Spectre. “Of course I’ve seen it,” snapped Mr Craig senior, who like Bond himself, doesn’t suffer fools.
It was back on March 2, 1968, that Daniel Craig, 47, was born at home inside number 41 Liverpool Road, where dad Tim lived with then wife and Daniel’s mum Carol Olivia (called Olivia), an art student in Liverpool, whose parents had run The Deva Hotel in Watergate Street, now called Amber Lounge.
Legend has it that it was while dad Tim was working as landlord of the Ring O’ Bells pub in Frodsham in the 1970s that the youngster revealed his chosen vocation while weaving in and out of drinkers’ legs. And it may have been trips to Chester’s defunct Gateway Theatre and Liverpool’s Everyman as a youngster that proved his inspiration.
“Someone asked what he was going to do when he grew up and without breaking stride he said ‘be an actor’,” Tim, who has another grown-up son Harry, is reported to have said.
No one in the family – apart from Tim’s cousin Simon Jones of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Brideshead Revisited fame – was from an acting background, but Daniel knew it was his destiny.
“Life’s a journey, the desire to find your bliss, the ultimate quest - he got lucky,” Tim has said in the past.
Tim and Olivia split in 1972 and Daniel and his sister Lea were brought up by their mum in Liverpool and later Hoylake, Wirral, where he went to school at Hilbre High School and, fleetingly, Calday Grange, before dropping out and heading to London at 16.
Daniel, an avid Liverpool FC fan, auditioned and was accepted for the National Youth Theatre and attended the Guildhall along with the likes of Joseph Fiennes and Ewan McGregor.
His first commercial performance was in Morgan Freeman film The Power Of One and since then he has been in continuous employment in theatre, television and film.
Tim, former landlord of The Boot Inn at Willington, previously described his relationship with his son as like ‘best friends’ and said Daniel was a ‘very fine human being’ who wouldn’t be changed by fame and fortune.
