You know what would have really made all of the red carpets for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo more exciting? If Daniel Craig had walked them all hand-in-hand with his new wife, Rachel Weisz. Before you yell and say that Daniel is not Brad Pitt and he doesn’t need to “sell” his relationship alongside the “sale” of his film, whatever. Daniel used to walk all of his red carpets with Satsuki Mitchell. Of course, Satsuki allegedly went all Blu Cantrell when Daniel dumped her for Rachel, so maybe Daniel is letting his marriage simmer for a while before he and Rachel bring the burning heat to multiple red carpets.

Anyway, these are photos from Paris. Daniel and Rachel arrived together, happily smiling and holding hands upon their arrival, knowing full well that they were being photographed. So why didn’t Rachel come to the Paris premiere of GWTDT? Dunno. I will say this – Daniel looks less gnomish in Paris. I find him attractive normally, but I’ve come to the realization that he rarely photographs that well in still photos. Oh, and remember those excerpts from Daniel’s GQ UK interview where he was bitching about the Kardashians? Well, the full GQ interview was released, and he has more bitching and moaning to do. Actually, this GQ piece is very interesting – if you read the whole thing, Daniel does sound grumpy and surly, of course, but there’s another layer too – he’s a neurotic bastard. He’s intensely self-aware and you get a sense of a man who is overly concerned with how he’s perceived. You can read the whole GQ piece here, and here are some more highlights:

The best advice he ever got: “I got a piece of advice a long time ago. Declan Donnellan [legendary British theatre director, co-founder of Cheek By Jowl] gave me and a roomful of other acting students this piece of advice. He said, ‘You can’t get bitter. You can’t get bitter about what might have been.’ Well I know it’s easy for me to say. But hand on heart, going into my third year of drama school, and the s*** was hitting the fan and people were trying to get agents and competing really nastily with each other, well not nastily, but desperately, I was [he shrugs his shoulders] not bothered. And every time I’ve failed to replicate that,” he continues, “then s*** has started to go wrong. I never want to know who went up for the part. I never want to know who my agent’s other clients are. I never want to know what they’re doing, how they’re doing. I do not give a s***. As soon as you start doing that, you start questioning your own existence, questioning why you don’t have this and that, and it destroys you. The grass is always greener. There’s always going to be someone with a bigger toy than yours.”

He knows he’s awful on talk shows: “It’s a thankless task being a talk-show host,” he reasons, almost sympathetically. “Especially if you have to do a show every day. I look at these guys over here – Letterman, Leno. Whatever you think of them – and they’re not shows I tune into – but you look at them and you think, you earn your money. It’s a lot of money, but you earn it. Sometimes they get guests like me. [Adopts upbeat voice] ‘So, how are you?’ [Switches to surly teenager] ‘All right.’ Actually I did it recently for Cowboys & Aliens, and I kind of relaxed about it a bit more. Say less, laugh more. Laugh at every joke. I was a bit more chilled about it. I don’t care.”

He doesn’t want to try to revamp his grumpy persona: “But the only way to get round that would be to go out and do a huge PR thing. No, no, look at me. I’m really funny. And that would be terrible. Whatever happens has to happen nat­urally and I’m not going to go out there and compensate for something because there’s an opinion about me. There’s no point. It’s just not the way I’m constructed. I think it would show me up in a worse light. ‘Oh look, he’s trying to make us like him now. What a c***!’”

He got new tattoos when he married Rachel: He sports a pair of tattoos, now, on his inner biceps that may or may not have some connection with his new wife. On his right arm are words, on the left a symbol. “They are,” he points out, somewhat superfluously, “mine. They’re two very personal tattoos.” They look new. “Yes, they are. They’re just part of a stage I’m in,” he laughs. “You should see the rest of my body. Then you’d be intrigued. Oh boy. It’s been a very complicated couple of years.” He’s joking, but he won’t elaborate.

He’s not going to share his marriage: “No. Honestly, no. Absolutely, honestly no. That of all things. We got away with it. We did it privately. And I’ve got a lot of people to thank for that. But that was the point. We did it for private reasons. Because we didn’t want it f***ed up, because that would be sharing a secret. And the whole point is that it was a secret. A secret is a secret in my mind. Ultimately, if I start making comments of any sort…” he hesitates. “Look. I’m in love. I’m very happy. And that is as far as I’m prepared to go. Life is long, life goes wrong and I don’t want to say something now that might be thrown back later. Look at the s*** that’s been written already. The racist s***. It’s out there and you know what? F*** ’em. Not the nice people. The nice people don’t write on the internet. But if that’s the audience that I have to pander to, if that’s what I have to do to make people feel happier about me, then no, f*** ’em. Because my happiness, I’m sorry, is more important to me. Ultimately, people are saying, ‘Give it six months.’ Well guess what? I’m not responding. Life is long and I am hopefully in this for the long run.”

[From GQ UK]

I don’t understand the “racist” remark, unless he’s referring to some insults that might have been slung at Satsuki? Because she’s Japanese or mixed-Japanese, right? Because what “racist” comment could be made about Daniel or Rachel? Anyway… Daniel Craig, a neurotic legend in his own mind. I just wish… I don’t know, I wish he wouldn’t take everything so f–king seriously. Not everything is, like, a war crime. Sometimes people just like to gossip. Sometimes people just like to imagine two hot celebrities doing it. Sometimes people just appreciate when someone just owns their status as a movie star without having to listen to that movie star’s grumpy, surly, neurotic soliloquies.

Photos courtesy of Fame.