10 Movies That Forced Actors To Face Their Fears

8. Daniel Craig's Fear Of Heights (Casino Royale)

Casino Royale crane jump parkour scene
Sony Pictures Releasing

It's easy to forget these days, but back in the mid-2000s, there was a lot of backlash over the casting of Daniel Craig as the next James Bond.

As casting director Debbie McWilliams recalled in a recent chat with Entertainment Weekly, "It was unbelievably negative, I have to say. The press response was awful and I felt so sorry for him."

In the end, Craig proved the doubters wrong when the brilliant Casino Royale released in November 2006, but it wasn't just the press that the blue-eyed Brit had to overcome in the early days of his 007 journey - it was his own personal fears.

More specifically, Craig's fear of heights reared its head when he was told that he would have to climb a 200ft-tall crane for the movie's opening parkour sequence.

"It was borderline fun and fear", said the actor. "But there was no time for my fear of heights... you just have to do it."

The crane sequence truly is eye-popping, with some incredible practical stuntwork really selling the danger of that height. And though Craig obviously didn't do every stunt in this scene, he clearly did enough to make himself rather terrified.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!