Queer's ending has split audiences who have seen Luca Guadagnino's new movie, but Daniel Craig has defended it in a new interview.

Forget all the pearl clutching over Daniel Craig wiggling out of his James Bond bondage to take on a gay role in "Queer," now in theaters where the dark dazzle of the Brit star's portrayal just won him a Golden Globe nomination as best actor in a drama. Is Oscar next? That's the idea.

We are in Mexico City, in the 1950s. Sexual liberation (specifically queer liberation) is in the air. It is a place where writer William S. Burroughs lived and let loose – Queer is adapted from the 1985 Burroughs novella of the same name – and Guadagnino brings the world to life in a rush of unreal colours,

Judging by a Sunday Times interview last weekend, Daniel Craig now enjoys wearing brilliantly-coloured sweaters and extraordinary trousers, very much like a man running as fast as possible in the opposite direction to James Bond.

Daniel Craig plays a flamboyant American living in 1950s Mexico City who falls hard for a younger man in Queer. The film is directed by Luca Guadagnino.

Daniel Craig would not have taken the role of a gay man in Luca Guadagnino's Queer if he were still playing James Bond. In Guadagnino's film he plays William Lee, a gay character in the adaptation of William S.