York | Archive | 2007 | January | 13
From the archive, first published Saturday 13th Jan 2007.
HAVING finally managed to see Casino Royale last week, I am delighted to report I have something in common with gorgeous brunette Bond babe Vesper Lynd. And no, I'm not an MI6 agent. One member of our household working for the Government is quite enough; it's so tedious when the husband says, "I can't tell you how my meeting went because then I'd have to shoot you."
The Bond film, which has just been nominated for nine BAFTAs, including Daniel Craig as Best Actor, received its royal premiere at the Odeon Leicester Square last November. Bizarrely, the husband was there. As far as I was aware he was staying overnight in London for more of his Top Secret meetings, but then he called me on his mobile from the melee by the red carpet and said, "Guess where I am?"
He also did this from the Collateral premiere, when I was one of the lucky few not to speak to Tom Cruise, and he saw McFly perform live from the Odeon's balcony for Spiderman 2 (much to the daughter's chagrin). Sometimes I wonder whether he tells me the truth about his job at all.
"Can you see Daniel Craig?" I shouted over the screams of the crowd in the background.
"No."
"Well, who can you see?"
"A girl."
"What's she wearing?"
"A dress."
"I need details," I pleaded.
"It's red."
The deadpan delivery is a sure giveaway. He said he missed the Queen, but I reckon that's a cover. Clearly, he was there On Her Majesty's Secret Service.
Now I come to think of it, he's always had a thing for Moneypenny (I Googled the premiere pictures; Samantha Bond was the lady in red). If it wasn't that I myself have spent some time on the back seat of a fogged-up Jag with Daniel Craig, I'd be jealous, but fair's fair.
I only remembered about this all-too-brief encounter with Mr Craig after the Tuxedo Moment.
Don't be kidded into thinking Craig's iconic turn in Casino Royale is the much-vaunted vintage-trunks-emerging-from-the-sea scene. When Vesper, played by Eva Green, gives him a tailored tux - "I sized you up the moment I saw you" - and he puts it on and looks at himself in the mirror, he is so damned sexy that my friend Pauline and I found ourselves clutching each other and whimpering.
Still, whatever he wears, Daniel Craig is mesmerising. I met him ten years ago when I interviewed him on location for Moll Flanders, in which he played Alex Kingston's highwayman lover, and because it was raining we ended up taking shelter in the back of the director's car.
He was dressed in a loose, open-necked shirt that clung damply to his torso. It was a steamy scene, if only because our soaked clothes were drying out. I'm not sure I asked any sensible questions; I just remember being dazzled by his silvery-blue eyes and famously craggy grin.
I found the cutting the other day when I was rooting around in the loft in the course of our post-Christmas clear-up. Apparently, Craig said: "When you have a sword, a dagger, two pistols, a bag, a hat, a costume and a wig you have to clear your head and try to get into the part as opposed to just playing the pistol."
All I can say is, he's obviously mastered multi-tasking. Witness the driving-a-tanker-while-beating-up-a-baddie-and-detecting-a-bomb scene. As to playing the pistol, nobody does it better.
l TALKING of tidying, which I have been doing in the hope that an organised house will inspire me to organise my thinking and galvanise my work, etc, etc, are you a clutterer or a clean-sweeper?
I know it is supposed to be therapeutic to throw your old stuff away, but I'm a hopeless hoarder. There's no cash in our attic, just boxes and boxes of mementoes that I can't bring myself to chuck out, things like school reports, love letters, diaries, postcards, theatre programmes, gymkhana rosettes and recordings of the folk group I was in at 18.
Then there are the photos of the husband and myself 15 years ago when we still retained a pre-parental bloom of bright-eyed and bushy-tailed youthfulness. "Wow," the daughter exclaimed, coming across a picture of the two of us at a summer ball, me in a slinky frock and the husband in a tux. "You look so different."
There were gaming tables, as I recall, and we drank Champagne and gambled with pretend chips and felt like real high rollers. The husband may not be a double O' - he's more of an extra-large these days - but it was nice to be reminded that we'd had our very own Casino Royale moment. Even if the tux was rented.
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