Daniel Craig sits in the restaurant of the Carlyle Hotel in New York and talks about how easy it can be to close yourself off to new experiences.

“We get older and, perhaps out of fear, we want to control the way we live. And I think that’s kind of the enemy of art,” Craig says. “We must oppose it. Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, but you must try to oppose it.

Craig looks like someone who has gotten rid of a too-tight tuxedo. Part of the tension of his tenure as James Bond was this obvious struggle with the constraints that came with it. However, such strains seem to be out of the window.

Since leaving the role, Craig, 56, has been eager to branch out in new directions.

And now, Craig gives arguably his most transformative performance as the avatar of writer William S. Burroughs Lee in Luca Guadagnino’s tender story of love and nostalgia in postwar Mexico, Weird.