Who exactly is Graves?
An enigma! He’s of mysterious origins and he’s got a lot of money from diamond mining, but then he also has this thing of being an eco-friendly industrialist.

How do you approach being a Bond villain when it’s been done so many times before?
You have to try and bring something new to the game. And that’s quite scary because you know it really could go badly wrong... Actually, it was pointed out to me the other day that, at 32, I’m the youngest guy to play a Bond villain, which is good because that suddenly gives it a different dimension.

You also take on 007 in the franchise’s first ever swordfight...
Yeah. I’ve been doing a lot of fencing. It’s different from what I’m used to, which is stagefighting. In stagefighting, you make large moves and you’re aiming to miss. Whereas here I’m aiming to hit, so it was like relearning the whole thing.

Did you get to check out any of the more exotic locations?
No, I’m mostly in the studio, ’cos the baddie’s always hunkered in some bunker, surrounded by people in boiler suits [laughs]. So I don’t get to see the outside world very much.

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