LONDON: Director Sam Mendes says he was unsure about Daniel Craig’s casting as James Bond and thought it was a “terrible idea”.

The 49-year-old Spectre director said he initially thought Craig should decline the role as it would not suit him, reported Digital Spy. “I had cast Daniel Craig in this film I made in Chicago called Road To Perdition about 15 years ago, and it was his first big American film.

“The role of Bond came up four or five years later and I was called by a publication, and they said ‘your old friend and collaborator Craig has been suggested as Bond, what do you think?’ and I said ‘terrible idea, he shouldn’t do it’,” he said.

Mendes, who was also behind the camera for the record-breaking Skyfall in 2012, said the personalities of Bond and Craig were initially very different but the franchise adapted to work with the actor.

“For me at the time I thought Bond had become the opposite of what Craig is, a slightly disengaged, urbane jokey eyebrow-raising, a pastiche in a way, and I felt Craig’s reality and his passion and honesty as an actor would not work. “But of course the franchise adapted to work with Craig and when I saw Casino Royale, I thought it was a fantastic piece of casting. And it was that that got me re-interested in Bond as a movie.”