Daniel Craig won't leave his fortune to children; calls inheritance 'distasteful'

Daniel Craig has decided to follow in the footsteps of billionaires like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg and not leave behind his fortune for his offspring.

The "James Bond" star, who shares 29-year-old daughter Ella Craig with ex-wife Fiona Loudon and a toddler daughter with current wife Rachel Weisz, said that he finds the concept of inheritance rather "distasteful" and would get "rid" of his money instead of giving it to his two children. The 53-year-old, who is reportedly worth $160 million, explained his decision in a recent conversation with Candis magazine.

"I don't want to leave great sums to the next generation. I think inheritance is quite distasteful. My philosophy is get rid of it or give it away before you go," the "007" star said.

"Isn't there an old adage that if you die a rich person, you've failed?" he added.

Craig also remembered American industrialist Andrew Carnegie who followed a similar philosophy and gave away billions of dollars before his death in 1919. "Carnegie gave away what in today's money would be about 11 billion dollars, which shows how rich he was because I'll bet he kept some of it, too," Craig said.

The "Knives Out" star is not the only actor who is against leaving large sums of money for their children. Ashton Kutcher, who shares two children with his wife Mila Kunis, said in an appearance on Dax Shepard's "Armchair Expert" podcast in 2018, "My kids are not getting like big...I'm not setting up a trust for them, we'll end up giving our money away to charity and to various things."

"If my kids want to start a business and they have a good business plan, I'll invest in it but they're not getting trusts. So hopefully they'll be motivated to have what they had or some version of what they had," said the actor who has a 6-year-old son Wyatt and 4-year-old daughter Dimitri.

Other celebrities who have decided not to leave their inheritance for their children include Mark Zuckerberg who is worth an estimated $132 billion. The Facebook founder and his wife Priscilla Chan, who share a 6-year-old daughter Max and a 4-year-old daughter August, vowed to give away 99 percent of their shares in the company over the course of their lifetime.

Now-divorced couple Bill Gates and Melinda Gates also said in 2011 that they are leaving their two daughters Jennifer, 25, Phoebe, 18, and son Rory, 22, only "a minuscule portion" of their vast fortune, currently estimated at $150 billion.