ANGELINA JOLIE took all the plaudits when her kick-ass heroine Lara Croft hit cinema screens in 2001’s Tomb Raider.
But special effects legend Chris Corbould spotted the potential for her little-known co-star to be a future James Bond — Daniel Craig.
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The Oscar winner reveals in an exclusive interview that he put the actor’s name forward for the biggest role in movies to producer Barbara Broccoli, the bigwig who decides who gets handed the licence to kill.
Now Chris, 63, who has devised Bond’s explosions, chases and crashes in 15 movies, will be giving Daniel a huge send-off in No Time to Die, which hits cinemas on Thursday.
He says: “I worked with Daniel on Tomb Raider. I remember telling Barbara, ‘I just worked with this guy and I think he has James Bond potential’.” His tip paid off and she hired Daniel for 2006’s Casino Royale.
So what did he see in the actor best known at the time for TV’s Our Friends In The North. Chris recalls: “He had a way of moving, a way of holding himself. He had those piercing blue eyes too. When you see that stare of his, you believe he is a killer.”
Having worked with Daniel on five of the spy movies, the pair have become good pals, and he didn’t want to see the 53-year-old leave the billion-pound series. He says: “I miss him as soon as I finish working with him.”
Chris was 18 when he worked on his first Bond movie in 1977, The Spy Who Loved Me starring Sir Roger Moore.
Fans will be pleased to know that in the latest adventure a baddie’’s lair ends up on the wrong side of the spy’s pyrotechnics.
Chris promises: “You won’t be disappointed with the action sequences.” Here, the special effects guru reveals the secrets behind Bond’s high-octane adventures . . .
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Destroy an Aston Martin
FOR the latest Bond film Chris ordered eight Aston Martin DB5s because he needed to smash up so many of them.
The classic car was made famous when Sean Connery, the original 007, drove it in 1964’s Goldfinger.
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But there are probably not many owners of the vintage vehicles, which are worth around £700,000 each, who would agree to have their pride and joy riddled with bullets like they do in No Time To Die.
So Chris came to an agreement with Aston Martin for it to build six special stunt versions of the silver motor for the film and he would use two originals for close-ups.
He says: “It became apparent we needed some full-on stunt, gadget ones, which Aston Martin put together in a very short time.”
Despite receiving some heavy damage, none of the cars ended up in the breaker’s yard, though some were close. Chris says: “We never actually trashed any – not totally.”
Daniel’s stunt agony
AFTER breaking his leg in Spectre, pulling an Achilles tendon during Casino Royale and slicing a finger on Quantum Of Solace, Daniel Craig needed surgery on his ankle due to an injury while filming No Time To Die in Jamaica.
Chris says: “I’m not surprised, there is no pulling back from any of the fight scenes he does. He gets stuck in.”
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Fortunately, the action hero escaped from a drowning scene unharmed.
Chris says: “There is a sequence in No Time To Die where Bond is trapped in a sinking train. We built a hydraulic rig in the water tank in Pinewood Studios and put Daniel through his paces seeing how well he could swim underwater.”
Newcomer Lashana Lynch, who plays a secret agent, was also up for doing some of her own stunts in scenes where she tussles with Daniel.
Chris says: “She really got into the role. They kicked off with each other.”
Keeping it real
ONE of the joys of watching a Bond movie is knowing the stunts are real.
And keeping computer-generated imagery to the absolute minimum doesn’t come cheaply – the budget for No Time To Die is reportedly £200million.
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In the new film the spy will come out of the back of a plane in a hi-tech glider, jump from a bridge and leap over huge walls on his motorbike.
Chris says: “The thing I love about Bond is they’ve always given me and my crew the resources.
“They could take the easy way out and use CGI but Bond has always based its films in reality.
“We could have done the big Tube train crash sequence in Skyfall as a model or CG, but it wouldn’t have been as good.”
Bigger bang theory
Chris is in the Guinness Book of Records for the size of the explosion he created in Spectre where Bond destroys Blofeld’s hideout.
The scene was a nerve-racking moment because it had to work first time – and director Sam Mendes decided to use just one camera to shoot it.
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“It was very brave,” says Chris.
But he has faced some limitations. In Skyfall, Chris wanted to stage a fake explosion on MI6’s London headquarters – but he reckoned that Britain’s spy agency would say no.
He said: “I wouldn’t have won that battle.”
So instead computer wizardry was used to create the effect.
Thrill of the chase
When Bond bosses were unhappy with a motorbike chase in Pierce Brosnan’s 007 debut GoldenEye in 1995, Chris had an idea.
He told them: “Get rid of it. Motorcycle chases have been done to death. Why doesn’t he steal a tank?’”
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It became one of Bond’s most iconic set pieces and helped Brosnan on his path to success in the role.
Chris also came up with an amazing scene for Skyfall director Sam Mendes.
He says: “I got a call from Sam saying, ‘I’ve got this great chase through the Underground in London and I just need one jaw-dropping moment’.
“I went to sleep that night and the train scene came out of that.”
In the scene, baddie Silva, played by Javier Bardem, blows a huge hole in a tunnel below the Tube tracks – sending a speeding train crashing down through it which narrowly misses 007.
Chris used life-size replicas of the 60ft trains for the huge crash.