Craig finishes a bag of chips and, having exhausted Pinter, is happy to chat about Bond. At the end of Betrayal’s fourteen-week run, he’ll be starting the next 007 film, once more with director Sam Mendes. Skyfall was an intense collaboration. The idea was always that Judi Dench’s M would die—a downer lifted by a late “humor pass” on the script. During filming they added more jokes. The shot where Bond leaps atop a speeding train in pursuit of a killer and straightens his cuffs: That came to Craig practically in mid-flight. “He’s really fucking hurt himself jumping on top of a train,” he says, “and he just wants to straighten himself up. That’s what it’s about: poise. To be more concerned about the way you look at the moment of crisis. The weirder the place it comes from the better it is.”

He had them reset the train (it took an hour) and do another take. Presto: an iconic image.

Craig’s Bond suffered mightily in three films but was, in effect, born again at the end of Skyfall—ready to take on the trappings and suits of 007 with less chafing. “Hopefully we’ll reclaim some of the old irony,” he says, “and make sure it doesn’t become pastiche. I can’t do shtick, I’m not very good at it. Unless it kind of suddenly makes sense. Does that make sense? I sometimes wish I hammed it up more, but I just can’t do it very well, so I don’t do it.”