Daniel Craig at the 2019 Oscars

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At the 91st Academy Awards on Sunday the 24th of February, Daniel Craig and Charlize Theron presented the award for actor in a supporting role. Daniel Craig was invited to be a member of Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2007, and presented with Nicole Kidman the award for Art Direction at the 2007 Oscars. Despite many other award nominations and wins, Craig himself has never been nominated for an Oscar. This year’s presentation comes as Craig is preparing to start filming Bond 25. He is in good shape, hardly different than he looked in 2015’s Spectre.

Daniel Craig was amongst the many well-dressed and James Bond-styled men at the Oscars this year, including Trevor Noah, Bradley Cooper and Keegan-Michael Key. Cooper and Key wore Tom Ford. This year Craig wore a Tom Ford Atticus-model midnight blue—still a trendy black tie colour—dinner suit with wide black silk-faced peaked lapels. It fastens with one silk-covered button and is detailed with silk-faced jetted pockets and a single vent (I think that is what I saw). The sleeves are detailed with Tom Ford’s signature silk gauntlet cuffs and five buttons. Because Daniel Craig is wearing Tom Ford again so close to the start of production of Bond 25, it could be an indication that Tom Ford is returning for Bond 25. Daniel Craig has been wearing similar dinner suits in a number of appearances since Spectre, so this may be the look he will sport in Bond 25.

The dinner jacket is close-fitting but not too tight, though it still looks a hair too short. It is an improvement over what we saw in Skyfall and Spectre, and hopefully it will still be improved for Bond 25.

Craig’s white dress shirt has a spread collar and double cuffs and fastens down the front with three black studs. His black bow tie is a wide butterfly and much wider than what we are used to seeing. Though it pairs nicely with the dinner jacket’s wide lapels, it is much too large for his head. He is wearing a white gardenia pinned to his lapel. He has a casually folded white handkerchief in his jacket’s breast pocket. There is a black silk cummerbund hidden under his jacket. His shoes are black patent leather.

Walking out to the “James Bond Theme” in black tie, and suavely adjusting his bow tie, Daniel Craig is ready to return to James Bond.

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75 COMMENTS

  1. Thanks Matt!

    It’s a fine Bond outfit. You are right about him appearing to be very fit and I can’t understand people who say that he doesn’t look the part.

    “Craig himself has never been nominated for an Oscar. ”
    -His day may come. But even if not, that would be a fate he would share with many great actors. And then just think about how many mediocre actors have won an AA.

    Best,
    Renard

  3. Despite what we here might think, is it possible that vents on dinner jackets are finally becoming a permanent/respectable option after all these years? I’m seeing them all over the place, on DJs of all qualities, these days.

  5. I saw quite a few men in dinner jackets with wider lapels that had lots of belly to them. Do you think this is a nod to a wider trend or just one night? I know there are plenty of designers that have wanted to move past the minimalist trend for a few years now.

    Two that I thought very prominently did not look good were Alfonso Cuaron and Pharrell Williams. Pharrell for obvious reasons, but I couldn’t decide if Cuaron’s problem was that his jacket was too small in the shoulders, too big in the collar, or both. It’s a shame, because I liked that jacket. The super dark maroon was a subtle way to be different without going off the deep end like Pharrell did.

    • All of those examples are from Tom Ford. It has been Tom Ford’s look for over a decade and has made regular appearances at award shows for as long, so it’s neither a signifier of trends nor is it specific to last night.

      • I knew it was Tom Ford’s house style. I didn’t realize everyone sporting that style at the Oscars was wearing one of his though.

  6. Given the latest menswear trends of more volume, pleats and higher rises, along with longer jackets, I’d expect (and hope) the cut to go back more towards the good ol Brosnan era. But then again, it’ll probably take a few more seasons before the high street and the likes of H&M catches up to what the initiated menswear enthusiasts are already doing.
    Craig’s Bond remains most inspirational in his casual clothing. Probably the best part of Quantum of solace tbh.

    Ps. That’s a rather nasty collar gap in the last shot. Do you think that comes down more to construction of the jacket or the tight fit?

  7. Beautiful suit, hideous bowtie. I’m not a fan of the wide butterfly ties, even on people like Brosnan whom it suited more. Craig looks great in the thinner thistle/diamond tie of Quantum of Solace, and the Casino Royale one looked absolutely perfectly balanced even if it wasn’t as thin.

    Still, he is looking good, and I’m trying to keep an open mind about his next movie. I really hope it doesn’t revolve around Bond being too old and worn out for the job. So far Craig’s had 2 “You’re too young and reckless!” films and 2 “You’re an old dog who shouldn’t be in it anymore!” films. It’s starting to wear thin, personally.

    • He should have left ages ago. Especially after that disaster of film called quantum of solace. Let’s bring bond back to after die another day.

      • I also hope they don’t go this route because it’s really overdone at this point. It’s lazy and boring. But I think calling it “sexist” is perhaps a bit much. That term is getting overused quite a lot these days, which is causing it to lose meaning.

    • Considering how Spectre had him throwing his gun away and riding into the distance like an old Hollywood romance, the first thing Bond would need to do is reenlist with MI6. Since he left Blofeld alive, there is a very good chance that Medeline is going to end up like Tracy from OHMSS in my opinion. So Craig’s character will embark on the second of his lover’s revenge missions. But also, since for the first time in the series, all of Craig’s Bond films have been tied in a loose arc, and we know this is his last one, I’m expecting EON to wrap all the events since Casino Royale up so they can start completely fresh for whenever the next Bond is cast.

      • “there is a very good chance that Medeline is going to end up like Tracy from OHMSS in my opinion”

        I really hope not. Women dying so men can go on revenge sprees is not only done to death at this point, it’s just plain sexist.

      • At the moment there are rumours that it could be the other way round, i.e. that (Craig’s) Bond could die (in order to kind of “resurrect” him with the new Bond actor to come)…

      • That’s at least the fourth time in the series he’s either gone rogue or attempted to quit, and as far as I can recall they’re never actually showed him reenlisting on screen, unless you count Moneypenny changing his resignation into a leave of absence behind his back.

    • “But I think calling it “sexist” is perhaps a bit much. That term is getting overused quite a lot these days, which is causing it to lose meaning.”

      The term is not being misused in this case, because the trope itself is noted by many as sexist. Google “women in refrigerators”.

      • “Lots of people agree with me” isn’t really a persuassive rhetorical device. And I could be wrong, but I thought the original idea behind “women in refrigerators” was to address the imbalance between the number of male protagonists vs. the number of female protagonists in comic books. In other words, “women in refrigerators” is, at most, a byproduct of sexism, not an example of it in and of itself.

        But we can certainly agree that it’s lazy and overused in Bond. I have no desire to see it in Bond 25.

  9. I am going to mildly dissent. Craig looks ok, but he certainly does not look as good as Moore and Brosnan at a similar age, nor do I think he looks as fit (bulky) as he did as recently as Spectre. He just looks a bit wan. And it is amusing to see him strain to be taller next to Charlize (please do Atomic Blonde 2). Overall I am skeptical that Bond 25 is a good idea. (and I say this as someone who has Casino Royale and Skyfall in the top 6 Bonds, and I like Quantum). Maybe they will surprise me, but the various storylines being thrown about have been done before (as recently as 2006-2008) and are predictable. And it shouldn’t take five years to do these films when Mission Impossible is churning out escapist entertainment of the Brosnan/Moore variety regularly and successfully.

    Back to the topic of this blog, the dinner suit is nice if slightly short, but the bow tie is awful (for once I agree with Saul). And I agree on A-Rod – he looked terrific, far more Bondian than most, despite white jacket in February and the very cool weather we are having in LA.

    • ” And it shouldn’t take five years to do these films when Mission Impossible is churning out escapist entertainment of the Brosnan/Moore variety regularly and successfully. ”

      -But Craig simply doesn’t want to give a performance like Brosnan and Moore. Fortunately there are other ways to approach the Bond role than those two did.

      • This is not a matter of approach to the Bond role; this is a production issue. The constant disarray at MGM and the uncertain creative direction of EON Productions has led to gaps in production that are remarkable for such a lucrative series. My point about Mission Impossible is that they know what they want to put on screen, and they have a production team led by Cruise (as producer) and a studio in Paramount that provides stability so that a large, globe-trotting action adventure venture film is made every three-ish years. Since 2002, Bond has had two four year gaps and a a five year gap. That is a reflection of studio and production team issues, not lead actor ones.

  10. I couldn’t be bothered to sit through the whole oscars show but I did catch parts of it. I noticed Craig’s disagreeable bow tie among several others of a similar shape so I’m going to assume that someone in Paris (or wherever) has blown the whistle and all the ‘designer’ brands are in the midst of their Pavlovian reaction. I’m on record as saying that IMO Connery in Thunderball displays the best dinner suit (with narrow batwing bow tie) of the entire series so it should come as no surprise that I’m not impressed with this current butterfly trend. Reminds me of Ian Schrager giving press talks outside Studio 54!

    • I think most people consider Connery’s Thunderball dinner suit the best in the series, don’t they? I love the Skyfall and Quantum DS too, but the Thunderball one has the perfect proportions. I’m surprised you can’t buy a copy somewhere.

      • While most of the large bow ties were from Tom Ford, there were a few that weren’t Tom Ford. See Mark Ronson, Stephan James, Sam Rockwell and Billy Porter.

      • Thanks for the correction. All the ones I had seen were paired with Tom Ford dinner jackets! Interesting that everyone else is adopting this trend at least a decade later after Ford was trying to make it a thing again.

    • @Christian
      “And it shouldn’t take five years to do these films when Mission Impossible is churning out escapist entertainment of the Brosnan/Moore variety regularly and successfully.”

      -But this kind of concept wears out rather quickly, and the more frequently the use the faster. Therefore I think it was a good move of Bond producers to alter the scheme a little into a sequel-like film series, and with films plots whose conceptions differ from what we had all the years before (always the same old story – predictable and tiresome). And in this context, after all it IS also a question of the actor’s approach to the Bond role. Craig’s way to play it matches the overall concept because it stands out (and IMO in a superior way) from what we had in the Brosnan era. To me, towards the end of the Brosnan era Bond simply wasn’t entertaining any more (with DAD being the absolute nadir).

      • Renard – I generally agree with you! But five years is too long to let a franchise as lucrative as 007 stay out of theaters. I would expect every 3 years for this sort of movie. The delays are not Craig’s fault. Again, MGM has been a disaster, on-and-off, since the late-1980s and EON really doesn’t seem to know the type of film they want to make. Tonally, the Craig films have been quite erratic. I find the Craig era to be very strong (which again, I think offers two near-perfect Bond films, one underrated flick with tremendous strengths and glaring weaknesses in Quantum, and one awful Spectre) but also very inconsistent in the tone of the films. This is unlike every other era of the series, where, the 1960s films were pretty consistent in tone (if anything, Goldfinger is the outlier), the 1970s films were pretty consistent, with some fluctuation in the first half of the decade, the 1980s were consistent after the soft-reboot of For Your Eyes Only, and the Brosnan films are pretty similar in tone (and I didn’t care for the Brosnan films – Pierce deserved a lot better). Cubby just put up big stunts and big locations, in an escapist package. I am not saying EON should do that today, but they have had a serious reboot, a grim revenge thriller, a throw-back to the ’60s spy-opera, and a misfired throwback to the 70s with a bit of OHMSS thrown in. And I think it’s because EON doesn’t seem to know what to do with Bond so it takes them a long time to decide – the Danny Boyle experiment speaks to this. And while I think an action director would do wonders for the series, I am looking forward to see what Fukunaga does with Bond 25.
        We are way off the topic of this blog, probably mainly my fault – sorry Matt!

  11. ” Craig looks ok, but he certainly does not look as good as Moore and Brosnan at a similar age”

    ?????
    Already in TMWTGG Moore looked far older than Craig is looking now. See

    https://www.bondsuits.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Marine-Blue-Suit-Cocktail-Cuff.jpg

    Do you notice the age spots on his hand? And also his skin was far more wrinkled than Craig’s is today. IMO Craig has preserved very well – he really doesn’t look like 50 (not at all).

    That Moore and Brosnan had aged “more reasonably” in comparision is nothing but a myth.

    • Craig may not have age spots, but he looks like he’s had a face-lift, and he was homely to begin with. Moore and especially Brosnan looked infinitely better at his age, but of course they were starting out from a much better baseline…

      • Craig has probably had a facelift, and, like most actors these days, is using Botox and fillers, and the hairline has aid. Which is fine, it’s movie-magic. I just don’t think he looks all that convincing as leading man material at this point (Unlike the Casino Royale days, does the audience look at him at this point and think he is really handsome or sexy as Bond is supposed to be?). As for his age, Roger and Pierce were convincing as leading man material well into their 50s because they were simply better looking than Craig. Craig tries to make up for that in physique.

        As for whether it’s time for him to hang it up, as some point, the audience loses interest and he will have held the role for 14 years. I don’t really detect any excitement (yet) for Bond 25 and Skyfall (the last time Bond held centerstage) was a long time ago, in movie franchise terms.

      • “homely to begin with”
        “As for his age, Roger and Pierce were convincing as leading man material well into their 50s because they were simply better looking than Craig. Craig tries to make up for that in physique.”

        Sorry, but these assertions are bloody ridiculous. I’ve only heard this common refrain of Daniel Craig “not” being handsome from 007 fans who never liked him in the first place.

      • Connery had to wear a hairpiece, but can anyone picture him having “Botox and fillers?” i can’t…

      • As a matter of contracts and money, I am sure Connery would today. If you look at his eyes, he may have had them done in the late-1970s. A lot of actors do because the eyes are so important to their craft.

      • Ha – that’s because Roger looked better before that facelift! I am not giving Craig hell for a facelift or any “assistance.” Like I said, it’s standard movie-magic now.

  12. Basically, at this point, Craig (50) is almost the same age as Connery (53) when he returned to do Never Say Never Again. I also think it’s time for him to hang it up.

    • @Jovan Gothier
      “I’ve only heard this common refrain of Daniel Craig “not” being handsome from 007 fans who never liked him in the first place.”

      Spot on. It’s always the usual suspects complaining. Gets boring over time.

      • “… but can anyone picture him having “Botox and fillers?” i can’t…
        ”
        -I wonder how you can be so sure that Craig had that. Perhaps only because you want it to be true (?)

    • I live in West Los Angeles; I am an attorney with friends and clients in this industry. It is a joke in this town that everyone stays “suspiciously 35.” As for what I want, i don’t really care what Craig looks like (my opinions about his believability for certain aspects of the role are already stated, but I think he is a great Bond, with some excellent acting)- what I want is a compelling Bond 25 that isn’t a predictable retread of OHMSS or QoS.

      • Perhaps I’m a dinosaur, but in this world of uncertainty we need a seasoned professional, not a eight dollar haircut bond.

    • Craig’s wide-eyed, taut-eyebrows look is the tell-tale sign of cosmetic surgery. There is no sin in getting cosmetic surgery if you can afford it, of course, and I can understand why actors would resort to it. I will stick to my guns, however, in saying that by any classical standard Craig is objectively homely (big ears, thinning hair, bulbous nose) regardless of what one thinks of his interpretation of the 007 character.

      • Of course you’re correct; Pierce, Tim and Roger were objectively speaking, the most classically handsome of all the Bond actors. George and Sean were probably on a par after that and Craig the least. As to whom are deemed to have the most sex appeal or were “best” in the role, then these are, of course, different matters

  13. I get the point of this debate, but unless something we don’t know about is going on, this is indeed intended to be Craig’s final Bond film. 50 is not too old to play Bond for the final time. (Is it??) And Craig looks in-shape for the role at the Oscars.

  14. Jovan – I like Daniel Craig as Bond, and as I stated earlier, Casino Royale and Skyfall are top-tier Bond movies, arguably the best of all of them. And Craig looked fine, if not classically handsome, in his first two movies. I don’t think there is anything “bloody ridiculous” about my opinions. If you have something to offer other than a polemical dismissal, please do so.

  15. One final follow-up on the “movie magic” regarding how actors age; if Roger Moore were 50 years old today, I have no doubt that he would look as he did in the late 1960s when The Saint wrapped given the widespread use of cosmetic procedures and surgery, and the societal expectations of how actors and actresses age (it’s not a good thing, or a healthy projection by Hollywood, but it just is). Similarly, if Sean Connery were 35 years old and making Thunderball today, I am sure his physique would, given his frame and Hollywood contracts and physical conditioning, resemble Gerard Butler in 300. It is simply the way the business has shifted.

    • I’m not so sure about ‘societal expecations’ being the driver and would prefer to think of things like improved nutrition and wider access to gyms and training. But I’d agree with what you’d predict regarding how much better these actors would have aged. Not that they didn’t stay in pretty good shape anyway but it certainly seems people in general age much less than they did in Connery and Moore’s era.

      • Roy – I agree with you. What I meant was what the audience has been conditioned to expect. A lot of it is less smoking, hard drinking, the improved nutrition and conditioning that you reference. But a lot of it too is the Juvederm/Botox combo that became prevalent in the mid-2000s. I am not placing a particular value judgment on it – just recognizing the reality of what the studios and audiences expect. We know from the Sony hack that Sony at least floated the idea of Craig having a work done so he would look younger for Spectre.

  16. “if Roger Moore were 50 years old today, I have no doubt that he would look as he did in the late 1960s when The Saint wrapped given the widespread use of cosmetic procedures and surgery”

    -Sorry, but when Moore was 50 (=1977) those things already existed. And he made use of it – it is known that he had several face liftings. The thing is rather that already in 1970s he simply looked older than he actually was.
    See https://www.bondsuits.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Light-Cool-Grey-Suit-3.jpg
    – I see a lot of wrinkles and a generally strained skin. And to me his hair at least partly seems to be false.
    Perhaps a consequence of his living in the south of France with overmuch exposure to sun (?) :-)

    • Renard – the procedures are much better today than 40 years ago. It isn’t about full facelifts – it’s about lasers, peels, and the Botox/Filler revolution. Look at the way Bill Holden (a favorite of mine) looked in The Wild Bunch – that was typical for how 50 year old actors looked in those days (for that matter, Anne Bancroft at 37 played Mrs. Robinson, and Judy Garland and Liz Taylor looked far older than their equivalent-aged actresses today. As for Moore, if you remember (?) the time when he was Bond, or go read the contemporaneous reviews, he was considered younger looking than Connery, bringing a youthful enthusiasm and charm to the role (typical views of the 1970s) and “ageless” by Octopussy. Look at the New York Times and Variety reviews of the time. I both remember how he was looked at at the time (10 years younger than his actual age) and I have read the reviews.

  18. Just out of interest – have you done analyses on Mitchell and Patrice’s suits? I understand they don’t get the best screen time, but I’ve always been interested…

  20. @Matt
    OK, be that as it may – but in fact the “scientific analysis” of the actors’ attractiveness comes to different results than that of my learned co-commentators: Connery’s first and Brosnan’s only fourth on the list. So their judgement was wrong – “objectively speaking ” :-)

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