Daniel Craig, the James Bond star, has a killer British accent, but does he speak Russian as well?
Yes, he does somewhat. Daniel learned how to speak some Russian for his role in the movie Defiance, even though he speaks English with a Russian accent for most of the movie. Since Daniel is actually British, the Russian accent was difficult to master and was met with some criticism.
Read on to learn more about Daniel Craig and his role in the movie Defiance!
Daniel Learnt Russian for the Movie Defiance
Defiance came out in 2008 and received an Oscar nomination as well. It is a WW2 movie and based on a true story. The movie explores the lives of a group of Jews who banded together in an Eastern European forest during WW2; after fleeing from the holocaust. Daniel Craig plays one of three Jewish brothers that made it all happen – alongside Liev Schreiber and Jamie Bell. Daniel’s character is a partisan named Tuvia Bielski, and he leads the group in question, called the Bielski camp. Edward Zwick, the man behind movies like Blood Diamond, was the director for Defiance as well.
Jamie Bell, Daniel’s co-star, spoke about the difficulties of honing one’s language skills for roles like these. In a BBC interview, Jamie said that none of the actors felt confident rehearsing their lines in Russian while on the set because each of them was similarly worried about sounding bad. “Everyone was so nervous about their accents,” he said. “We literally turned up on the set on the first day of rehearsals and everyone was saying their lines very quietly. No-one wanted to give away how bad their accent actually sounded, Daniel included. Anything that brought more authenticity to these characters, we thought was important.”
Daniel Had Difficulty Getting the Russian Accent Right
In the movie, Daniel has many long lines in Russian, and the ones he has in English required a Russian accent as well. Critics have said that sounds, at certain points, more like a robot or like Google translate. Daniel himself had a difficult time memorizing these lengthy lines at first, and once he had he began to worry about his Russian accent. Sources say that he was so worried about getting his lines right that he practiced them in secret often.
Daniel is British; he grew up in England and lives there still. His most famous character, James Bond, is British. He spoke about his difficulties regarding his Russian accent, saying, “I left school at sixteen and I can’t conjugate a verb in any language, even English. So Russian, I just did phonetically. Live [Daniel’s character] has an education and so he took pains to learn it a bit. It was tricky and difficult and especially because Ed [the director] suddenly heard, to his mind, remarkably well from whoever was teaching us Russian and decided to make two or three other scenes in Russian as well. I’m glad that we did it.”