Daniel Craig reveals racy 'Easter egg' that was cut from his new film

Daniel Craig has revealed that the opening credits to his new film Queer were initially a lot saucier  – but the cheeky scenes were removed from the final cut.

The James Bond actor, 56, stars alongside Drew Starkey, 31, in Luca Guadagnino's anticipated movie based on William Burroughs' semi-autobiographical novella of the same name.

The period romantic drama, set in 1950s Mexico City, follows American expat and war veteran William Lee (played by Craig), who has a romance with a younger man, Eugene Allerton (Starkey), a drug addict and discharged Navy serviceman.

In a recent interview, Craig spilled that Guadagnino had included sperm-soaked sheets in the original opening scenes – however the director later clarified that those snippets had since been deleted.

'The opening credits? Is the sperm still in there?' Craig had said in conversation with Variety.

His costar Starkey responded: 'I think so.'

Craig continued: 'See, that's why you need to see the film again. I think there may have been a lot more at one point, but it's still there. It's a little Easter egg.'

'I don't think the semen is anymore in the opening credits,' filmmaker Guadagnino later clarified.

'We removed it.'

Turning his attention to Craig and Starkey, he added to the publication: 'They must have seen an early cut.

'There was a shot of the sheets with the semen. But, of course, there's a lot of semen in the movie.'

Queer opens with the camera observing a collection of items - such as a passport and a pair of glasses - strewn across an unmade bed. 

In their interview with Variety, the costars also opened up about playing gay characters as straight actors for their new film, stressing that the film wasn't defined by their sexualities.

'It wasn't part of the audition process [director Guadagnino] didn't ask us the intricacies of our sexuality,' Starkey revealed.

In real life, Daniel is married to Rachel Weisz and Starkey is dating Odessa A'Zion.

Craig added: 'I'm not dismissing it, but I didn't really… There's kind of a trust in the director, and a trust in the process of what you know, and realizing that the story has massive, universal themes that appeal hopefully to everybody.

'The movie's not defined by that. I really, genuinely don't think it is. Other people see it differently—that's up to them.'

'I've been shooting sex on-screen since I did my short film Qui when I was 22,' Guadagnino added. 

'I always said to myself, if you start to give that scene a level of awareness or alarm, it's going to become what it shouldn't be.

'Quality means making an audience surrender to what they are seeing,' he says, 'not judging, not feeling the fakeness of it, but believing it completely.'

The films sees some steamy scenes between Craig and Starkey, with the former saying: 'You kind of have to leave your ego at the door. You've got to kind of just let it go. There are no rules.'

In the trailer, William and Allerton spend time together at the cinema and the beach before they appear to have sex and are also seen lying in bed.

Craig spoke about the love scenes in the film, telling the Venice Film Festival: 'We just wanted to make it as touching and as real and as natural as we could.'

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