The new James Bond arrives for lunch at the Dorchester Hotel. I’d half-expected the screeching of brakes, or gunshots, but Daniel Craig, 38, arrives no more noisily than any other diner. He wears jeans, a black polo shirt that sets off his reddish tan and muscle-bound torso, and a thunderous expression that, combined with his unearthly, pale blue eyes, provides an air of authentic menace.

If I were one of Bond’s enemies, I would lay a revolver on the table beside me. But I’m not, and Craig is not Bond. So I place on the table instead a well-thumbed copy of A Number, an intellectually challenging play by Caryl Churchill, in which Craig starred with Michael Gambon at London’s Royal Court theatre in 2002, and for which he was nominated for an Evening Standard award. As soon as Craig sees it, his clenched jaws relax. He rolls his eyes, as if to say: “Imagine bringing that old thing!”

It’s a little contrived, but I had to do something. Craig hates publicity, and by the time we meet he has already endured almost a week of back-to-back junkets. I hate to think how many times he has been asked which Bond girl is his favourite; and which of his predecessors was the best James Bond. (He rolls his eyes. “They’re all great,” he answers to both.) What I want to find out is if he regrets taking on the part, not only because many fans deem him unsuitable, but also because it may put an end to the kind of acting assignments – including plays at the Royal Court – he has done previously. He looks briefly at the menu and says he’s not really hungry. (“Been eating junk all morning”.) So we push the menus aside.

His wariness around journalists is not altogether surprising. In recent months, Craig’s private life has ceased to be private. A long-time friendship with Jude Law is apparently in ruins after he reportedly had a fling with Law’s girlfriend Sienna Miller. (Both have denied it.) Of similar interest are a reported fling, some time ago, with Kate Moss; a seven-year relationship with the German-born actress Heike Makatsch, who appeared in Love, Actually; and his four-year marriage in the early 1990s to another actress, Fiona Loudon, with whom he has a teenage daughter.

He won’t talk about his private life, apart from telling me that he has “probably obliterated it” by becoming Bond. “We know why we’re here today. It’s not like I said, ‘Hi, I’m Daniel, come into my living room…’ ” He’s constantly followed by photographers. Some even got on set when he was shooting on location. “We were filming and they discovered two guys buried up to their necks in the sand with cameras. They had been there all night.”

He tells the story to amuse, but deadpan, so that he seems unmoved by it himself. This turns out to be typical. In person, Craig is as far as you can get from the sophisticated twinkle of Pierce Brosnan, or the camp eyebrow-raising of Roger Moore. He prefers flat monotone.

When he does, rarely, present a glimmer of enthusiasm, he is quick to hide it again behind a macho cynical indifference. His lunchtime performance is more like one of 007’s dull-eyed enemies than Bond himself.

None of the actors appointed to play Bond has avoided press intrusion and initial hostility from fans. Even the great Sean Connery was derided as a former coffin-polisher from Scotland. But unlike his predecessors, Craig has had to put up with character assassination on the internet. One website urged visitors to campaign against his appointment, showing doctored photographs of Craig alongside various “lookalikes”: the Russian premier, Vladimir Putin, the daft Cosmo Kramer from Seinfeld, and Gollum from The Lord of the Rings.

Conventional media have been sniffy too: Craig was mocked for wearing a life jacket on the speedboat that took him to his first press conference. Some complained that he is too fair-haired for the part (“James Blond” is a typical headline). Others have claimed, falsely, that he couldn’t drive a manual car, that he was afraid of guns, and even of water.

“Believe me, I would love to answer this shit.” (Craig swears a lot.) “I do read reviews. I have been on the websites. I had to. There is too much temptation. You write your e-mails and then you think, let’s have a little look… I had a very dark two or three days. I was very despondent. But I realised I was peeing into the wind. I vowed to work twice as hard and get it right.

“I only know how to do my job one way. I don’t think that you can please all the people all the time. If I was doing my patter I would say, ‘Don’t worry, there is enough in here to entertain every Bond fan.’ And that is true. But these people think that I’m going to f*** with it in a way that is going to destroy it. This is bigger than me.”

The 20 James Bond films made by Eon Productions since 1962 comprise the second-highest-grossing film franchise after Star Wars. In the UK, the series accounts for three of the five most-watched television movies.

The one novel the company hasn’t filmed – until now – is Casino Royale. Ian Fleming’s first Bond novel introduces the character, and describes how he gets his 00 number and his licence to kill. An Americanised adaptation was shown on television in 1954, and David Niven played Bond in a 1967 version that bore little resemblance to the book. Until the 1990s, the film rights were held by Sony Pictures Entertainment, which decided to make its own version and even a rival series. But after protracted argument, Sony settled a legal action in 1999, giving up all rights to Bond in return for certain rights to Spider-Man. Ever since then, an “official” version of Casino Royale has been inevitable.