Every movie star had to start somewhere. Most of the biggest names in Hollywood didn’t arrive in a major blockbuster film as a fully formed star, instead they started out in small roles in small movies, and eventually got noticed and became part of bigger and better things. Daniel Craig says he made a couple of movies that were so bad he would literally hide them at Blockbuster video stores.
Back in the before times, prior to the advent of streaming, or even getting movies via DVD in the mail, people had to schlep their way to stores that rented movies if they wanted to watch something. Blockbuster Video and other stores of its kind had massive libraries, including not only the newest major releases, but a lot of movies you’d probably never heard of. Daniel Craig recently told Collider that he thought a couple of his early films were so bad that when he found copies on the shelf, he would toss them somewhere customers wouldn’t find them. He explained…
I used to have this thing, there was a couple of movies that I did back in the day when Blockbusters was still a thing, I used to go to Blockbusters and if I saw it on the shelf, I would grab it and throw it under a counter. I know it was not going to make a huge difference, but I thought if at least one person didn’t see the movie, it would be a good thing.
Craig refused to name the specific movies he was referring to, and it has to be said that the list of possibilities is significant. Blockbuster didn’t actually declare bankruptcy and begin its true decline into obscurity until after Daniel Craig had become James Bond in Casino Royale, so technically every movie he made prior to that is a potential contender. And there are several different films that you’ve probably never seen that were likely on the shelf at Blockbuster back then.
The fact is that most stars likely have those movies. In some cases it may be that the star took a job because it was the job available to them at the time. In other cases they may specifically dislike their own performance, feeling that they just weren’t as good an actor at a point in the past, and wishing they’d done a better job.
Daniel Craig isn’t even the only James Bond actor to feel this way. Sean Connery’s big break was in Disney’s Darby O’Gill and the Little People, which isn’t a terrible movie, but not the sort of thing that the man who created the James Bond role on film probably wanted people talking about.
Blockbuster is now a sitcom more than a store, but it’s one that many of us, including Daniel Craig, will not forget.