The Bond star will receive the Dilys Powell Award for Excellence in Film at the UK film critics' 45th annual ceremony on 2nd February 2025.

The UK's leading film critics today announced that British acting powerhouse Daniel Craig will be awarded their top honour, the Dilys Powell Award for Excellence in Film, at the 45th London Critics' Circle Film Awards ceremony on Sunday 2nd February at The May Fair Hotel.

“This is such an immense honour and I’m incredibly grateful to the London Film Critics’ Circle,” says Daniel Craig on receiving news of the award.

“As critics, we were already fans of Daniel Craig for the adventurous roles he took on even before he became James Bond,” says Rich Cline, Chair of the Critics' Circle Film Section. “We honoured him for his roles in The Mother (2003) and Enduring Love (2004), and then of course we also enjoyed his superb take on 007 as well. Over the decades, he has consistently made bold choices and pushed against the boundaries that often limit other top stars. We love the Knives Out movies, and have nominated him this year for Queer. We are looking forward to celebrating his career at our ceremony.”

Before starring as 007, Craig received critical acclaim for his performances in films such as John Maybury's Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon and Sam Mendes' Road to Perdition in 2002. He starred in Steven Spielberg's Munich that same year.

In 2006, Craig assumed the iconic role as the legendary James Bond in the critically acclaimed Casino Royale. The actor then went on to portray 007 in four more films: Quantum of Solace in 2008, Skyfall in 2012 and Spectre in 2015, with his run as Bond culminating with the release of No Time to Die in 2021. In recent years, Craig starred as detective Benoit Blanc in the hit mystery Knives Out (2019), reprising the role in Glass Onion and the forthcoming Wake Up Dead Man.

Last year, the London critics presented the Dilys Powell Award to Jeffrey Wright. Recent recipients have included Michelle Yeoh, Sandy Powell, Sally Potter, Pedro Almodovar and Kate Winslet. At the 2024 ceremony, Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest and Andrew Haigh's All of Us Strangers won three awards each. Colman Domingo received the inaugural Derek Malcolm Award for Innovation, which will be presented to Zoe Saldaña at this year's 45th awards on 2nd February at The May Fair Hotel. Brady Corbet's The Brutalist and Sean Baker's Anora lead the nominees.

The awards are given by the 210-member Film Section of the Critics' Circle, the UK's longest-standing and most prestigious critics' organisation. The May Fair Hotel, part of Edwardian Hotels London, is the main sponsor of the event, while awards sponsors include Reddit, MetFilm and Seesaw Media. In-kind sponsors include Wild Idol non-alcoholic sparkling wine, cocktail specialists Gattertop Drinks Co, print solutions experts MTA Digital, Excel Executive cars and Onlooker.tv, the video production group that will once again live-stream the ceremony on the Critics' Circle YouTube Channel @criticscirclefilmsection.