A Park Bench Before Becoming James Bond

Daniel Craig was born in Chester, England, in 1968 and grew up in Liverpool, where he spent time at the Everyman Theatre with his mother's friends. He left school at 16 intending to study drama, and by his own account he was an admittedly poor student who left with a couple of GCSEs and thought he would end up being a waiter. The leading London drama schools turned him down at first.

In 1984 he won a place at the National Youth Theatre in London, which he later said taught him discipline. He reapplied to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in the late 1980s and was accepted, graduating in 1991. He has said that he scraped into drama school and was nearly thrown out three times in the first year for being late.

It was in these years of trying to make a start as an actor that, according to the South China Morning Post's republished Business Insider list, he once slept on a park bench. The article gives no dates, location or details of how long it lasted, only that he was a struggling actor at the time,.

His career moved on in the 1990s. After appearances in London stage productions, he made his film debut in The Power of One in 1992, and in 1996 had a breakout television role in the BBC miniseries Our Friends in the North. He later played James Bond in five films, from Casino Royale to No Time to Die, which he was filming when the SCMP list was published.

Looking back on the early years, he told The Sunday Telegraph that the rejection in his profession can be degrading and depressing at times.