Daniel Craig has truly come full circle.
In this perfectly timed #tbt from the E! News vault, a scruffy-faced Craig dished all about his experience shooting 2002's Road to Perdition, which he starred in when he was 34 years old and the role of James Bond was barely a glimmer in his eye.
While the blockbuster action star has not yet garnered himself his own Oscar nomination, he was infatuated at the thought of working with a bevy of Hollywood pros who had all won their own golden statues.
"When you've got the talent on that set," the Spectre actor said of his Perdition cast. "I just heard a quote—it was 42 Oscars...on that set. It was obscene."
The film, led by Academy Award-winning director Sam Mendes, featured a long list of silver screen greats, including Tom Hanks, Paul Newman and Jude Law.
Though the film was not the first occasion Craig set foot on a professional set—he had already starred in Elizabeth and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider by that time—he was still many movies away from landing the role that would change his career forever. If only he had known in four short years he would be winning high-stakes poker games, battling psychotic villains, and wooing the world's most beautiful women as 007 himself.
Instead, he was not only mesmerized by the number of award-winning stars in his midst, but also the sheer magnitude of the film's set.
"I got a big kick out of it," the Emmy nominee said of working on the set in Chicago, which accommodated up to 400 extras. " It was sort of like proper movie making."
In a sentimental moment, the actor later added the experience was an example of why he "wanted to become an actor for—to sort of see scenes like that being shot."
He certainly got his wish. On Nov. 6, the latest installment of the Bond series will debut nationwide.
While he admitted to Today's Matt Lauer that he wrecked "three or four" Aston Martins making the new film, fans everywhere are still anxious to see what kind of gravity-defying stunts and nerve-wrenching scenes Craig is capable of next.
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