by Gingersnap | damian-lewis.com | August 17, 2019
We would like to wish the fabulous Helen McCrory a very happy 51st birthday from all of us at damian-lewis.com and fanfunwithdamianlewis.com. Here’s to many more!
Please visit Fan Fun with Damian Lewis for a special birthday celebration here.
by Gingersnap | damian-lewis.com | August 14, 2019
Damian was dressed for a day of cricket as he chatted with other guests in attendance for day one of the 2019 Ashes Series, England v Australia test match, at Lord’s in London. He enjoyed a glass of wine from the balcony of the clubhouse while waiting for the action to begin, but even a delayed start time was abandoned as the capital was hit by the torrential weather.
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Source: Daily Mail
by Julia Llewellyn Smith | The Times | August 12, 2019
Gosh, but having lunch with Helen McCrory is a daunting experience — a bit like sitting down with a more intelligent version of Princess Margaret or the seventh, undiscovered Mitford sister. Even though she’s a dainty thing, McCrory has extraordinary presence, crackling with the energy that has suffused her stage performances at the National, the Donmar and the Almeida and that underscored film roles such as Harry Potter’s Narcissa Malfoy. It has also made her the star of TV dramas such as Penny Dreadful and Peaky Blinders, the long-running BBC period crime drama that we’re here to discuss.
Her commanding aura is boosted by her Pathé-newsreel husky tones and by her marriage to another superstar, Damian Lewis, of Homeland and Billions fame. The couple are self-described “party animals”, frequently photographed looking Burton-and-Taylor glamorous on red carpets, and I imagine she would make the most brilliant hostess — fun, engaged and full of droll bons mots and anecdotes.
The regal effect is further enhanced by the fact that, in the pleasant but unglamorous surroundings of the British Film Institute restaurant on a baking-hot day (“I’m starving,” she barks before ordering asparagus, followed by a cobb salad with truffle fries), McCrory is in a long, flowery dress and full make-up for that evening’s London premiere of Peaky’s fifth season. “It’ll look good when it gets dark. For now it’s like, ‘My God, she’s like Liz Taylor the wheelchair years,’ ” she drawls.
McCrory doesn’t do traditional interviews, where she talks and I listen. Instead, she expects a conversation with topics ranging from how all young women today look identical (“Our generation had so many more styles to choose from. I really wanted to look like Debbie Harry — obviously quite a leap — then Siouxsie Sioux . . .”); to the recent resignation of the British ambassador to the US (McCrory’s father was a diplomat in countries such as Tanzania and Cameroon); to Peaky-related philosophical questions such as: “Is an act of goodness still good if you do it out of badness?” (She decides no.) It leaves me quite anxious that I haven’t been stimulating enough company.
Continue reading Helen McCrory: The Joy of Family Holidays in a Camper Van – Aug 12, 2019
by Jeremy Konrad | Bleeding Cool | August 10, 2019
Andy Wilson: Damian Lewis as Detective Charlie Crews — Life (NBC)
Life was what they took from him. Life is what he got back.” Falsely convicted, Det. Charlie Crews (Damian Lewis) emerges from prison after 12 years and the recipient of a $50 million cash settlement and returns to his former job as an LAPD detective with a new zen attitude, an affinity for fresh fruit, and a secret side investigation to find out who set him up. Among those on his suspects list is the hero cop father of his new partner, who herself is kind of a mess, dealing with drug addiction and daddy issues. Life was an amazing show, cancelled too soon after only a season and a half– a victim of the 2007-08 Writers Strike. Crews was an amazing detective because of the quirks and new outlook he got while in prison. He was also single-mindedly focused in a way that was almost scary as he searched for… revenge? justice? We’ll never exactly know. But he’s the only cop who could ever get away with driving a Maserati Quattroporte riddled with bullet holes, or a custom Bentley Continental GT listening to a Buddhist tract on attachment to material possessions and say, “I am not attached to this car.” He was so chill, so zen, so focused. The writing on this show was fantastic, and it’s why Charlie Crews is the greatest tv detective.
Read the rest of the original article at Bleeding Cool
by Gavanndra Hodge | The Telegraph | August 9, 2019
She’s straight-talking, hates housework, dresses to kill, and lives life her way – convention be damned. Turns out Helen McCrory has plenty in common with her badass Peaky Blinders character Polly.
Helen McCrory, the multiple-award winning actor, is holding what looks like a moist slice of turkey. ‘What is that?’ I ask. ‘It’s a face mask, darling. £1.99 from Superdrug,’ she says, rubbing it against her neck. ‘It’s going to make me look like a teenager.’
We are standing outside a café on the Regent’s Canal, cyclists and prams whizzing by. McCrory is wearing a floral tea dress, silver Zadig & Voltaire boots, sunglasses and a VIP wristband from a Bob Dylan concert she went to, five days ago. ‘I am never taking it off,’ she says.
There is a sort of rock-star swagger to Helen McCrory, 50, a charismatic, don’t-give-a-damn cool with her chipped red nails and posh-voiced sweariness. She likes to party, to wear top hats and vintage frocks, and there is the inevitable doubling of glamour that comes from her marriage to the actor Damian Lewis (Brody from Homeland, more recently Bobby Axelrod in Billions), with whom she lives in a tall, narrow house in Tufnell Park with their children Manon, 12, and Gulliver, 11.
But what is most thrilling about McCrory is not the husky wit, the famous friends (‘Have you seen Andrew [Scott] doing Present Laughter? Now that is how you do Coward’) or the fact that she ran an acid jazz club in Islington one summer in the early 1990s – it is her talent.
She brings a furious precision and intensity to the roles she takes: Medea and ‘Lady M’ on stage; on screen, Anna Karenina, Narcissa Malfoy, Cherie Blair and the gangster matriarch Aunt Polly in Peaky Blinders, the fifth season of which is soon to start on BBC One. Critics compete for the glowing adjectives when describing her performances – ‘superb’, ‘majestic’, ‘simply wonderful’. In 2017 she was awarded an OBE for services to drama.
Continue reading Damian and Helen Together On Stage Again? Hints Were Dropped! – Aug 9, 2019