Bond actor Daniel Craig has described his role as a cowboy in Cowboys & Aliens as a "lucky break" because he always wanted to star in a Western.
In an interview with Access Hollywood, Craig said: "I wanted to play a cowboy for as long as I could remember, but I genuinely thought I would never get the chance. It's just a lucky break.
"It's just, the horses, the hat, the guns, the sense of storytelling that's always in Westerns [that draws me to them] and did I say horses?
“There's just an iconography that's attached to it. I suppose back home we don't understand the frontier spirit anymore but [there's a] kind of spirit of toughness of living and good will find its way, you know."
Cowboys & Aliens director Jon Favreau also said that he cast Craig in the film as he believes that the James Bond actor is capable of playing a "bad-ass hero".
In an interview with Latino Review in April, Favreau said: "Though Daniel Craig has never been a Western gunfighter, he has been James Bond. He has been the lead in crime dramas, like Layer Cake.
"He understands the nature of what it is to be a badass hero."
‘Cowboys & Aliens’, which also stars Harrison Ford and Olivia Wilde, is due to be released on 17 August.
