Oscar Actors: Daniel Craig on Why He’s Preferred Gay Bars: “It Was a Very Safe Place to Be”

The Bond star explained his bar-hopping habits during a recent episode of the Lunch With Bruce podcast, telling host Bruce Bozzi — who is Craig’s friend and has been out to gay bars with him — that he historically preferred these spaces. The actor chalked it up to “the aggressive dick-swinging in hetero bars,” which was something he “got very sick of.”

“I’ve been going to gay bars for as long as I can remember. One of the reasons: because I don’t get into fights in gay bars that often,” he recounted. “It was like … ‘I don’t want to end up in a punch-up.’ And I did. That would happen quite a lot.”

But there was also one other perk for Craig when it comes to his bar type of choice. Not only was the atmosphere more laid back, but it was also a good place for him to meet interested women, as they were there for similar reasons.

“It would just be a good place to go. Everybody was chill, everybody. You didn’t really have to sort of state your sexuality. It was OK. And it was a very safe place to be,” Craig explained. “And I could meet girls there, because there are a lot of girls there for exactly the same reason I was there. It was kind of an ulterior motive.”

Craig shared his thoughts while recounting with Bozzi the one time they got “caught” at the gay bar Roosterfish in Venice Beach in 2010. Craig described it as “no big deal,” but his presence ultimately caught some media attention.

“The irony is, you know, we kind of got caught, I suppose, which was kind of weird because we were doing nothing fucking wrong,” Craig said. “What happened is we were having a nice night and I kind of was talking to you about my life when my life was changing and we got drunk and I was like, ‘Oh, let’s just go to a bar, come on, let’s fucking go out.’ And I just was like, ‘I don’t give a fuck, and we’re in Venice.’”