In director Luca Guadagnino’s Queer, Daniel Craig plays the role of William Lee, a gay man in 1940s Mexico who becomes infatuated with a young drug user, portrayed by Drew Starkey. Adapted from the William S. Burroughs novel of the same name, the 135-minute production makes its world premiere this week at the 81st Venice International Film Festival, and ahead of its release, Craig is opening up about what it was like to shoot Queer’s sex scenes with his much younger co-star.
Appearing at the Venice press conference for Queer (via Variety), Craig – who says he’s wanted to work with Guadagnino for the past 20 years – mentioned that as uncomfortable as sex scenes are to film, he and Starkey tried to make the best of the situation so that their tender moments together seemed as real as possible. He would go on to sing the praises of his co-star, who is 26 years his junior, adding that the pair “tried to make it fun.” Check out his comments below.
“You know as well as I do, there’s nothing intimate about filming a sex scene on a movie set. There’s a room full of people watching you. We just wanted to make it as touching and as real and as natural as we possibly could. Drew is a wonderful, fantastic, beautiful actor to work with and we kind of had a laugh. We tried to make it fun.”
Best known for his role of James Bond in five 007 movies, Craig’s final portrayal of the British agent was in 2021’s No Time to Die. Since then, he’s appeared in one other movie, Glass Onion, which saw him reprise his character of detective Benoit Blanc from Knives Out, a role he’ll take on yet again in the upcoming spinoff, Wake Up Dead Man. When it comes to Queer, Lee is a character that Craig seemed born to play. As he puts it:
If I wasn’t in this movie and I saw this movie, I’d want to be in it. It’s the kind of film I want to see, I want to make, I want to be out there.
Queer’s Director Calls Daniel Craig ‘One of the Great Actors of His Generation’
With A24 having already snatched up distribution rights to Queer, its wide theatrical release is inevitable. Though an exact date has yet to be announced, audiences will soon get to see Craig like never before in a film that promises to be a somber look at addiction, while also highlighting such universal themes as love and loss.
Fresh off the success of Challengers earlier this year, Guadagnino says that the star was up for anything in Queer, which only serves to shine a light on Craig’s talents as an actor.
“He is, honestly, one of the great actors of his generation: so subtle, so profound and yet so beautifully universal. So when he said, ‘Yeah, I’m up for it, and I’m up for anything that is required for me to be doing in this movie,’ I really felt like: ‘You know what? I’m a lucky guy.’ [He is one of] very few iconic actors who allow their fragility to be seen.”
You can get a taste of Craig’s phenomenal performance in Queer below thanks to an official clip, and look for Guadagnino’s film to hit theaters at some point in 2025 from A24.
