Daniel Craig rose to international superstardom with his turn as James Bond but the actor now says he had some “reservations” about accepting the role, with the biggest being the character’s “construct of masculinity.”

Speaking with The New Yorker about his upcoming LGBTQ-themed movie Queer, Craig said he struggled with accepting James Bond’s persona as a globe-trotting, debonair ladies man.

“I would say one of my biggest reservations about playing [Bond] would be the construct of masculinity,” he told the outlet. “It was often very laughable, but you can’t mock it and expect it to work. You have to buy into it.”

Craig’s turn in director Luca Guadagnino’s Queer marks the second time the actor will be playing an open homosexual man following his departure from the Bond franchise – his first being the Knives Out sequel – only this time promises something far more explicit in its offering of sexual content. While Craig said that he did not take the role in response to his near-20-year turn as James Bond, he did say that he would not have been able to take on such a role while playing Bond.

“I mean, the vulnerability of human beings is always interesting to me,” he said. “We’re all vulnerable. It doesn’t matter who you are. It doesn’t matter how tough you are, everybody’s vulnerable. But it’s how boys are brought up, how men are expected to behave.”

“Listen, [Bond] is nearly 20 years of my life. When I took it on I was one person. I’m now a completely different person. I’m not doing this movie in response to that. I’m not that small. But I couldn’t have done this movie when I was doing Bond. It would’ve felt kind of, ‘Why? What are you trying to prove?’” he added.

Craig previously talked about the difficulty of filming the Queer sex scenes during a press conference earlier this year.

“There’s nothing intimate about filming a sex scene on a movie set,” Craig said. “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.”

Paul Roland Bois directed the award-winning Christian tech thriller, EXEMPLUM, which has a 100% Rotten Tomatoes critic rating and can be viewed for FREE on YouTube, Tubi, or Fawesome TV. “Better than Killers of the Flower Moon,” wrote Mark Judge. “You haven’t seen a story like this before,” wrote Christian Toto. A high-quality, ad-free rental can also be streamed on Google Play, Vimeo on Demand, or YouTube Movies. Follow him on X @prolandfilms or Instagram @prolandfilms.