After watching Daniel Craig play the Aston-Martin-driving, tailored-suit-wearing spy James Bond for the last 15 years, it’s easy to conflate the actor with the character. But it’s good to remember the Englishman behind 007 is actually pretty down to earth; he’s been known to drink Guinness instead of shaken martinis, and he comes from humble beginnings where he “left home as a teenager and never looked back.”
That upbringing, where Craig felt he had to rely on himself rather than his parents, may be part of the reason why the 53-year-old actor recently said that he doesn’t plan on passing on a significant inheritance to any of his children.
“I don’t want to leave great sums to the next generation. I think inheritance is quite distasteful,” Craig recently told U.K. magazine Candis, per Page Six. “My philosophy is get rid of it or give it away before you go.”
Craig, who will appear as Bond once more when No Time to Die hits theaters in October after multiple COVID-related delays, has an adult daughter with his ex-wife Fiona Loudon. He also welcomed a daughter with his current wife, actor Rachel Weisz, in 2018, a fact you may remember after Piers Morgan shamed Craig for being a good dad. Weisz also has a son with her previous partner, filmmaker Darren Aronofsky.
If Craig makes good on his promise, these three won’t get much in the way of a trust fund, despite the actor reportedly raking in even more money for the upcoming Knives Out sequels than he did during his stint as Bond.
“Isn’t there an old adage that if you die a rich person, you’ve failed?” he said. “I think Andrew Carnegie gave away what in today’s money would be about $11 billion, which shows how rich he was because I’ll bet he kept some of it too.”
While Craig doesn’t have quite as much money as that titan of industry, he certainly has enough that his offspring would never have to work a day in their lives. But if he was able to become arguably the greatest James Bond of all time after a middle-class childhood with no nepotistic legs up, his children should be able to get by even without a few million waiting for them.
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