Daniel Craig Calls Inheritance ‘Distasteful’, Says He Won’t Leave Money to His Kids

“My philosophy is get rid of it or give it away before you go.”

Daniel Craig, the man who put his seal on 007 over the first part of this century, is a really wealthy man. Some estimates indicate he’s worth in the neighborhood of $160 million and he owes most of that to playing James Bond. 

If you’re Daniel Craig’s kid, however, don’t bet on seeing any substantial chunk of his considerable assets once he passes on; Craig recently admitted in an interview with UK magazine Candis that he doesn’t “want to leave great sums to the next generation.”

“I think inheritance is quite distasteful,” the actor said, “My philosophy is get rid of it or give it away before you go.”

Then he wondered aloud, “Isn’t there an old adage that if you die a rich person, you’ve failed?”

Craig wasn’t kidding about any of this, as in the same interview he noted that early 20th Century steel mogul Andrew Carnegie spent time before his death in 1919 shelling out billions in charity and funding various causes. 

Craig has an adult daughter by his first marriage and a toddler from his marriage to actor Rachel Weisz, who has a teen son with mother! director Darren Aronofsky. That’s three children of famous people who shouldn’t expect to spend their own twilight years riding it all out on a big old trust fund. 

To his credit, it seems more like Craig has an innate belief that those who benefit greatly from their skills and talents have some kind of duty to help others while still living, which is pretty noble. His words also sound like shade thrown at Britain’s ancestrally wealthy class, which has self-perpetuated for generations through inherited money and property. 

The actor’s mother was an art teacher and his father a merchant seaman, so it makes a little more sense for Craig to hold this view when it becomes clear he simply didn’t grow up with an expectation of one day being the lord of one of those massive English country houses. 

Regardless of what Daniel Craig does with his assets where his family is concerned, he’s only getting richer, having earned a reported $25 million for his final turn as Bond. 

The last Bond movie with Craig in the title role, No Time to Die, is set to premiere—finally—on October 8, 2021.