Daniel Craig as Bond. His gun is bigger than yours. Craig's Bond is still a smooth talker. And he's still a gamblin' man.

CRAIG ON STEVEN SPIELBERG'S ADVICE ON WHETHER OR NOT TO DO BOND
"One of the biggest influences for me doing Bond, and I'm sure he wouldn't mind me saying this, is Steven Spielberg [who directed Craig in Munich]. I just said, 'You know the kind of films I do, Steven, they're not, you know, this.' He just said, 'If the script's right and if the deal's right, do the job.' Things like that give you a spur to go on. I asked him straight out, I said, 'Should I do it?' And he went and said, 'Of course, you fucking should.' I don't know if he said, 'Of course you fucking should,' but something along those lines. ' I knew he'd give me a straight answer cause he's a straight guy. He sent me an e-mail when I finished, saying, 'Don't worry, the family will be there. We'll be there watching on the first day.'"

CRAIG ON CASINO ROYALE'S TERRORIST VILLAINS
Although Bond battles with machete-wielding terrorists-one of whom is modeled on the leaders of the treacherous Ugandan child-snatchers, The Lord's Resistance Army — he assures Premiere that the movie is not polemically charged. "Every terrorist in this movie is non-political," he says. To that point, Craig lobbied to remove a suicide bomber from an earlier version of the script. "I said, we can't have that in this movie because the connotations of a suicide bomber are something that lie within religion and politics. We have to make sure that all of the guys that are setting bombs and trying to hurt people are basically walking away with a suitcase of cash."

CRAIG ON PAST BOND FILMS
"I think I'm a fairly straight guy, a normal guy, who has grown up as you have watching them all their lives. There are certain things that Bond means to you that just don't mean anything to me. But I think if you were to tell me about them, I'd go, 'Oh yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about.'"

MAD MIKKELSEN ON THE CASINO ROYALE TORTURE SCENE IN WHICH HIS CHARACTER, LE CHIFFRE, PUMMELS BOND'S GROIN
"There's a thousand other ways to give pain to other people, he chose this one. And there must be a reason for it."

MIKKELSEN ON WHETHER OR NOT CASINO ROYALE WILL REALLY BE GRITTY
"We're talking grittiness compared to the other Bond films. That's what we're talking, of course we're not talking gritty gritty. That would be a no-go. The task is to bring this magical universe — it's still a fairy tale, he's still Superman, I'm still the baddie — into 2006. That's the kind of grittiness we're talking about."

Read the extensive eight-page cover story on Daniel Craig in the November 2006 issue of Premiere, on sale October 10.