Daniel Craig has not bought into the societal conception of masculinity, something he noted was among his “biggest reservations” about portraying MI6 secret agent James Bond in five films across 15 years.

“I would say one of my biggest reservations about playing [Bond] would be the construct of masculinity,” he told The New Yorker in a recent Q&a while promoting the limited U.S. theatrical release of Luca Guadagnino’s Queer. “It was often very laughable, but you can’t mock it and expect it to work. You have to buy into it.”

Craig, who has taken on a tonal range of films since portraying 007 via projects like Queer and Rian Johnson’s Knives Out universe, played the suave spy in 2006’s Casino Royale, 2008’s Quantum of Solace, 2012’s Skyfall, 2015’s Spectre and 2021’s No Time to Die. The actor has been vocal about leaving the franchise behind for good and having no regrets about doing so, as well as his lack of involvement in the search for a new Bond.

“I mean, the vulnerability of human beings is always interesting to me,” he continued, connecting the “artificial” concept of masculinity to the William S. Burroughs avatar he plays in Queer. “We’re all vulnerable. It doesn’t matter who you are. It doesn’t matter how tough you are, everybody’s vulnerable. But it’s how boys are brought up, how men are expected to behave, how someone like Burroughs was expected to behave.”

He added later, “Listen, [Bond] is nearly 20 years of my life. When I took it on I was one person. I’m now a completely different person. I’m not doing this movie in response to that. I’m not that small. But I couldn’t have done this movie when I was doing Bond. It would’ve felt kind of, ‘Why? What are you trying to prove?'”

Elsewhere during the interview, Craig opened up about feeling “suddenly kind of free” to take on other projects post-Bond, as well as what it was like losing the “freedom … as a semi-anonymous human being” after the franchise skyrocketed him to fame.

Set in 1950s Mexico City and based on the novella of the same name by Burroughs, Queer follows Lee (Craig), an American ex-pat living a solitary life in his forties in a small working-class and collegiate community. The romantic drama unfolds alongside the arrival of Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey), a young student whom Lee is driven to pursue.