Daniel craig biography book

This is a biography of British actor Daniel Craig by journalist and writer Sarah Marshall. As a rough summary of Craig’s professional career, bang up to date with the production of No Time To Die, his last Bond film, the book seems at first glance like a reasonable account of Craig’s life until 2020. However, I’ve read a lot of celebrity biographies and this one comes up sorely lacking. For starters, there are no acknowledgements; biographers always cite their sources, and the fact that there are zero mentioned in this book, or even anybody who “would prefer to remain anonymous”, despite copious direct quotes from Craig, his co-workers, his girlfriends and wife, suggests it was cobbled together from media reports rather than Marshall’s own interviews. Adding to that suspicion is the way both his private and professional relationships are depicted. Although Craig is well known for his reluctance to talk about his private life, preferring to keep his nearest and dearest out of the limelight, the description of it here reads like the pages of a gossip magazine rather than a serious biographical account, and even the details of his activities at work making films are scarce, with only broadly well-known facts related, and virtually no arguments or conflicts – is he really that agreeable? All of the photos are from stock photography companies (Rex Features, Alamy and Getty Images) with no official pictures even from MGM or Eon Productions (the companies responsible for the Bond films in which Craig features) and no unique shots of him that the publisher could have arranged for the biography or which Craig or his publicists could have provided for the project. Additionally, there is no index. Every other professionally-produced biography I’ve read has included a comprehensive index at the back so that readers can look up topics that interest them regarding the life of their subject. Lastly, the writing has no flair, a strange repetition in quotes and several odd typographical errors.

Far from “the definitive biography” declared on the front cover, I would say that this is just a beginning, as it strings the main events of Craig’s life into a mostly chronological sequence from his mother’s pregnancy with him until he left the James Bond franchise. The real work is still to come: journalist Sarah Marshall has to do the interviews and the research to find the detail to hang on her framework and the assistance of a good editor for what has the potential to be a rich and nuanced biography. Unfortunately, this one is not.