Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz knew each other for 16 years before they started dating – and showed their decade-long marriage is still going strong with a very loved-up display at Venice Film Festival

You needn’t look far to spot a Hollywood couple on the brink – from Bennifer’s divorce to Isla Fisher and Sacha Barhon-Cohen announcing their split.

Other casualties from just this year include Hugh Jackman’s 27-year marriage and Natalie Portman’s relationship with Benjamin Millepied.  

But one A-lister duo appears to be breaking the curse – with a 13-year-marriage going strong, even thought they didn’t date until a decade after first meeting.

Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz have known each other as far back as 1994, when they first played lovers in a steamy theatre production together. 

But after years of friendship, the couple fell in love while filming a movie together in 2010 – and were married in a ‘secret’ ceremony within a year.

In 2018, the couple – both of whom have children from previous relationships – also welcomed a daughter.

While they have been very low-key about the romance – with Rachel even stating she feels it’s ‘betrayal’ to discuss their love when her James Bond star beau is so famous – they have wowed fans at the Venice Film Festival earlier this week.

Rachel and Daniel were loved-up as ever as they shared  a kiss on the red carpet premiere of his latest film – a gay erotic drama called Queer – and were also spotted sharing a romantic meal in Italy. 

Here, FEMAIL looks at how the power couple found their way back to each other, after first connecting 30 years ago…

FIRST MEETINGS AND ROMANTIC REUNIONS

While they’ve now been married for over a decade, the pair didn’t even begin dating until 14 years after first meeting one another.

Daniel and Rachel were introduced to one another in 1994, after being a play – Les Grandes Horizontales at the National Theatre Studio in London – together.

The production, a steamy tale of a man – Daniel – caught up in sultry affairs with four French courtesans, one of which was portrayed by Rachel.

In 2013, when asked by a New York Times interviewer, the actress admitted the hints of attraction were there all those years back.

‘We would have to literally spend the day trying to seduce him,’ she said. ‘It was really hard work, as you can imagine.’ 

A more subdued Daniel however offered: ‘I’d rather not say… But we’re together, so maybe there’s a clue in that.’ 

That same year, the Bond actor had divorced from his first wife Fiona Loudon, with whom he shares daughter Ella, 31.

By 2010, the pair met again to work on Dream House – where they played husband and wife.

Rachel was fresh off her break-up with Darren Aronofsky, who she had been in a relationship with for nine years and also had a son with the American filmmaker and producer – called Henry, who is now 18.

The pair reconnected while filming, and, according to InStyle , started dating in December of that year, even enjoying a holiday in the English countryside together. 

‘SECRET’ WEDDING 

The following year, the couple got married totally in secret – and have refused to divulge any details on it. 

Speaking to GQ in 2012, Daniel said: ‘We got away with it. We did it privately. And I’ve got a lot of people to thank for that. But that was the point. We did it for private reasons.

‘Because we didn’t want it f***ed up, because that would be sharing a secret. And the whole point is that it was a secret. A secret is a secret in my mind.’

He continued: ‘Look. I’m in love. I’m very happy. And that is as far as I’m prepared to go. Life is long, life goes wrong and I don’t want to say something now that might be thrown back later.

Meanwhile, Rachel admitted that she in past ‘never wanted to get married’ before tying the knot with Daniel. 

‘I mean, I wear a ring all the time. I wear my ring with pride. I’m taken,’ she told ES Magazine. ‘You don’t join [marriage] like it’s the Rotary Club. You make it your own. It’s very personal, it’s very private.

‘I don’t think mine’s particularly exceptional apart from that we’re both in the public eye. But I never thought I would get married. 

‘It was not an ambition of mine. It was the opposite. I couldn’t relate to romantic comedies — marriage seems to be the whole point of them. Then it just happened, happily, at a more mature moment.’ 

TACKLING BROADWAY TOGETHER

In 2013, Daniel and Rachel decided to spark up their working relationship again as they – once more – played husband and wife in a Harold Pinter play, Betrayal, on Broadway.

However, far from a lovey-dovey romance, the theatrical endeavour saw them portray a wife who was cheating on her husband with his best friend for years.

Director Mike Nichols told the New York Times that they had been looking for a play to do together for ‘quite some time’. 

In the same interview, Daniel expressed to the outlet that his marriage with Rachel had ‘changed him for the better’ – and that he was ‘far happier than he had been for many years’. 

Rachel also said that she’d love for her and her husband to collaborate again on Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? sometime down the line – and that she ‘loves’ the certainty her marriage to Daniel has brought her.

However, speaking on the Today show last year, she admitted the pair likely won’t be co-starring in anything for the time being.

‘I think we really love our private life, as a life, as a family. And then we go to work separately,’ she explained.

‘It also means we can alternate. So I can stay home with the family while he works. We can swap out.

‘If we’re both doing something at the same time, it’s probably less ideal.’

BABY NEWS 

The couple, who are now largely New York based, have maintained a very low-key romance, also welcomed a daughter in 2018. 

But they have maintained their life together largely under wraps. 

‘Celebrity – it really doesn’t mean anything to me,’ she told The Guardian last year. 

‘And it’s no work at all to keep not showing up at events. It’s no work at all, to keep a private life.

‘Life can be demanding, life in a family can be complicated but I don’t even know what ‘celebrity’ means. I don’t think of myself like that.’ 

Rachel also added that she didn’t register if she got any public judgement for having her second child at 48.

‘Perhaps it’s just that we were very, very tired,’ she remarked. ‘Maybe I didn’t notice what was going on. You go into a bubble when you have a newborn, don’t you?’ We pause. ‘Of course there’s tremendous privilege that comes with it.’  

LOW-KEY ROMANCE

Both Daniel and Rachel have discussed the importance of keeping their relationship between themselves. 

Last year, as reported by Hello!, the actress told More magazine that she ‘protects her marriage’ by keeping details of their romance under wraps.

‘He’s just too famous. It would be a betrayal,’ she said. ‘When you’re young, you tell your girlfriends everything. One of the great pleasures of not being an adolescent is that you don’t have to share everything.

‘When you’re married, that door closes. The audience goes, and you’re in your own life.’

However, fans have still gotten fun glimpses into the couple’s dynamic. 

Speaking on The Graham Norton Show in 2015, Rachel revealed she has a car screen visor that says ‘Mrs Daniel Craig’ on it.

Audiences couldn’t hold back their laughter as comedian Dawn French joked: ‘I’m not sure I can forgive you Rachel… you have come between me and Daniel.

‘I’ve never met Daniel but I decided he would be my husband and then he decided on you.’

Rachel hilariously replied: ‘Do you know what you can buy? I’ve got one of those screen visor things that you put up at the top that says Mrs Daniel Craig.’

‘I don’t put it up all the time,’ she quipped. ‘But just now and again.’ 

VENICE POWER COUPLE 

While Daniel has told the New York Times in past that he doesn’t understand why people call him and Rachel a ‘power couple’ – the loved-up pair absolutely stole the show at this year’s Venice Film Festival.

They enjoyed a romantic lunch date in Italy on Monday and were spotted dining al fresco along along the Grand Canal, with the James Bond star adoringly feeding his wife a bit of his dish. 

Daniel and Rachel also had crowds swooning as they shared a tender smooch on the red carpet – as the actress stole tole the limelight at the Queer premiere on Tuesday.

She looked glamorous in a shimmering blue strapless gown and a diamond necklace.

Her husband, meanwhile, looked dapper in a white suit and brown shoes as he posed with Rachel.

They pair appeared packed on the PDA as the embraced and leaned into one another.

It comes as Daniel also appeared in high spirits on Tuesday as he attended the photocall for Queer.

The actor was seen larking around with his co-star Drew Starkey, 30, on the carpet as they promoted the same-sex romance movie in which they play lovers. 

Dressed in a crisp white shirt and jeans, Daniel – who has been tipped for Oscars success thanks to his role – beamed for the cameras before donning black sunglasses to pose with his other co-stars and the film’s director Luca Guadagnino.

Earlier, Daniel spoke about the frank gay love scenes in the movie, telling the Venice Film Festival: ‘We just wanted to make it as touching and as real and as natural as we could.’

Craig stars in the movie which is an adaptation of a novella by American writer William Burroughs.

Craig plays an American, William Lee, living in Mexico City who becomes sexually obsessed with a former sailor, Allerton [Starkey]. 

Delegates at the film festival have professed surprise at the sex scenes which are like nothing hitherto seen in a mainstream film.

‘Drew (Starkey) is a wonderful fantastic beautiful actor to work with and we had a laugh, we tried to make it fun,’ Daniel said.

‘There was some choreography in the movie which was a very important part of the movie. Drew and I started months before filming rehearsing the dancing. Dancing with someone is a great icebreaker.

‘You know as well as I do there is nothing intimate about filming a sex scene on a movie set, but we just wanted to make it as touching and as real and as natural as we could.’

Director Luca Guadagnino, behind the recent hit Challengers starring Zendaya, said: ‘Daniel in our first Zoom was adamant that this was going to be a love story first and foremost. We stuck with that – what does it mean to love and to be loved, to be connected and to be disconnected.’

Asked if James Bond – the spy played five times by his leading man – could be gay, Guadagnino replied: ‘Let’s all be grown up about this. There is no way around the fact that nobody would know James Bond’s desires. 

‘Having said that – no! The important thing is that he does his missions properly.’

He added: ‘I have been an admirer of this gentleman (Daniel Craig) for a long time. I had this intuition about him that I suffocated within me because have to make movies you have to not daydream.’ 

However when he asked Daniel to play Lee in this film he said yes. 

Describing Daniel as ‘one of the greatest actors’, he cited his ‘generosity of approach’ and added: ‘He has the capacity of being very mortal on screen, very few are. Very few iconic legendary actors allow that fragility to be seen and one of them is Daniel to be sure.’

Guadagnino added that he had tried to create imaginary worlds when filming the unfinished novella, and including scenes in which the actors try the hallucinogenic drug Ayahuasca.