By SARAH LYALL

LONDON - When he was cast as James Bond, filling the position most recently vacated by Pierce Brosnan, Daniel Craig did not seem like an obvious choice. He was an actor’s actor known for his intensity of focus and his wide range of challenging, counterintuitive roles.
He has played, among other things, a sharp-lapeled pornography baron from Manchester in the BBC mini-series “Our Friends in the North”; a college professor pursued by a male stalker in “Enduring Love”; and the poet Ted Hughes in “Sylvia.”
“Everybody said, ‘Oh, aren’t you afraid you’ll be typecast?’ ” he recalled of taking the Bond role. “And I said, ‘Of course I am,’ but if it has to be this - well, that’s not too bad.”
Traditionalists were appalled. The British tabloids, whose writers possibly had not seen Mr. Craig in his other films, sniped that he was too short, too blond, too actory; they spread the rumor that he didn’t know how to drive a stick shift, let alone one attached to an Aston Martin.
But from the first scene in “Casino Royale” (2006), in which Bond brutally kills a man with his bare hands and then coolly shoots and kills his own corrupt boss, Mr. Craig, 40, proved to be a rare combination of plausibility, physicality and charisma. He got rave reviews, and not just from Bond’s traditional fan base.
The latest movie, “Quantum of Solace,” which opens around the world in November, is full of the usual Bondian big guns, big explosions, big-busted women and big, improbable, high-testosterone stunts, many of them performed by Mr. Craig. While he bulked up for “Casino” - he wanted to “look as if he could kill people just by looking at them,” his personal trainer, a former Royal Navy commando, said recently - in this film he focused on building up his stamina, going for lean and mean over brawn.
Mr. Craig said that he had been determined to ensure that the story made logical and emotional sense. “Quantum” begins moments after “Casino” ends, with Bond, wielding an enormous firearm, on the island where he has just shot one of the men responsible for the death of Vesper Lynd, the treacherous love of his life.
“They’re two separate movies, but if you were to punish yourself by watching them back to back, you’d see a through line,” Mr. Craig said. He particularly wanted Bond to have to contend with the emotional repercussions of Vesper’s death.
“It was very important that we deal with that,” he said. “I just felt that you can’t have a character fall in love so madly as they did in the last movie and not finish it off, understand it, get some closure, That’s why the movie is called ‘Quantum of Solace’ - that’s exactly what he’s looking for.”
Last fall he and the director of “Quantum of Solace,” Marc Forster, set out to fill in the gaps in the script, left incomplete because of the Hollywood writers’ strike. Mr. Forster said he was struck by how much Mr. Craig wanted to get the story right and ensure that his interpretation of Bond was “not just a cliche, but a character that people can connect to.”
He added: “He’s very shy and slightly modest and humble, and he doesn’t like to be the center of attention. It’s more like, ‘Let’s make good movies and tell a good story and do a good job.’ ”
Along with “Quantum,” Mr. Craig is appearing this fall in “Defiance,” based on the true story of the Bielskis, a trio of freedomfighting Jewish brothers in World War II. Defying the Nazis (and the odds), they set up an unlikely community of tough, armed refugees in the punishing Belarussian forest. Mr. Craig plays Tuvia, their complicated leader - sometimes hot-headed, sometimes coolly rational; now seeking revenge, now preaching restraint.
The shoot was tough. The actors had to speak Russian in a number of scenes; they also had to live more or less in the woods, in sometimes extreme frigid conditions, for three months. Most of the cast came down with some sort of bronchial flu, Mr. Craig said, “but when we started drinking more, it seemed to get better.”
The director of “Defiance,” Edward Zwick, said it was interesting to watch Mr. Craig take on the role, with all its ambivalence and inner conflict, in tandem with playing the self-assured Bond.
“You see very clearly his ambition as an actor; he refuses to be just one thing,” Mr. Zwick said.
Mr. Craig is determined to continue pursuing extra-Bond roles.
“I’ve been so fortunate to land this amazing role in a huge franchise,” he said. “It’s set me up in a really good way for life, and that’s wonderful. But I love acting, and I genuinely think it’s an important part of what life is about. I get a kick out of it, and I’m not good at sitting around.”