Craig said: “I have some good friends and they were just like, I mean literally made a list of pros and cons. And the pros outweighed it.

“It was one of my closest friends who just said, ‘this doesn’t happen to people, just does not happen.’ He said, ‘you’re gonna just regret this for the rest of your life if you don’t do this’ and like yeah, sitting in a bar going, ‘I could have been Bond.’ And now it’s just going to be, ‘I was Bond’, which is worse!”

He also revealed that Broccoli, again, was also resolute in her determination: “I didn’t realise Barbara had already made up her mind. You know, if you know Barbara, that means she’s made up her mind.”

Craig still insisted on seeing the script in his “arrogance” and was famously convinced when he saw one particular line: “I was sort of expecting it to be like this Bond script and I go, ‘yeah, it’s not really for me’… but it was Casino Royale and I mean it was just blinding, and when I read the line, you know ‘vodka, martini, shaken or stirred?’ ‘Do I look like I—’ and it was written in the script: ‘Do I look like I give a f**k. That was the line… and as soon as I read that I went oh shit, I mean how can I say no to this?”