Press

Radio Times
29 Sept-5 Oct 2001
By James Rampton
Scans

Reporting for Duty

For Damian Lewis, playing real-life war veteran Major Richard Winters was a battle in itself. James Rampton discovers that the British actor’s fight to rein in his emotions was to fuel one of his most compelling performances to date.

Damian Lewis has a serious case of the butterflies. His most significant work yet as an actor is about to be viewed by a thousand people at the world premiere on Utah Beach.

But the British actor is really only concerned with the reaction of one viewer: Major Richard Winters, the outstanding war hero he is portraying.

Lewis, previously best know for performances in Warriors and Hearts and Bones, admits he finds the experience of watching the drama in the company of Winters and 46 fellow veteran from Easy Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, US Army, “Incredibly nerve-racking. It’s a moving day, and you realize it’s not about actors and directors saying, ‘Let’s pat ourselves on the back and smile for the cameras.’ It’s about the veterans.”

After the screening – which leaves many of the audience in tears – Lewis is a relieved man. Winters, modest by nature, comes up and gives the actor what, by his standards, is a big compliment. “Listen,” he tells him, “that was life on the screen. I’m too close to comment on your performance, but the producers have done a great job.”

Soon other Easy Company veterans are approaching Lewis and congratulating him on the accuracy of his portrayal of their commanding officer. “They said to me, ‘You’ve nailed him,’” the actor reveals later. “That took a lot of the pressure off.”

Lewis and Winters have just spent the week together in Paris, and the unspoken bond between them is clear. In his understated way, Winters makes it plain that he has a high regard for Lewis’s performance. “At first I thought, ‘Hey, Damian, you’re not going to make it – you’re not tough enough looking,’ But in the end, I thought he did it well. Above all, the advise I gave him was: ‘Hang tough.’”

Over a three-hour lunch in London a couple of weeks after the premiere, Lewis reveals himself to be an engaging 29-year-old. Full of lively anecdotes about the production, he makes for sparkling company. He is far removed from the sometimes sombre and taciturn man we see in Band of Brothers – which only goes to emphasize what a consummate actor he is.

With a twinkle in his eye, he recalls the quite bizarre casting process he went through in Hollywood. “I met Tom Hanks on the Friday, and he was very enthusiastic,” Lewis remembers, “but I didn’t think I’d got the part. So I went out on the lash with a mate till five in the morning, only to be woken at eight by the casting director saying, ‘Mr. Spielberg wants to see you at 12.’ I had four showers, but I still felt drunk!

“Anyway, when I went in, we didn’t talk about Band of Brothers at all. Steven did the classic American thing of saying, ‘You live in London – do you know John?’ and I thought, “Not unless he’s been in Kensal Green recently.”

It turned out he just wanted to see what kind of bloke I was, and when I came out, Steven’s assistant said, ‘Are you ready for boot camp in March?” I jumped up, shouted, ‘Sure am, buddy,’ and kissed everyone in the room.”

Once on set, however, Lewis realized he had to be much more restrained. The result is a performance of steely, banked-down intensity where one look conveys more than an entire page of dialogue. He says that, paradoxically, he learnt a lot from what Winters did not tell him.

“During the filming, I spoke to Winters constantly on the phone. But he’s not given to revealing himself. It was quite difficult to unlock him – but that was instructive, because how little he chose to reveal was illuminating about how to play him. As with any enigmatic hero, the acting challenge is: how do you make stillness, economy with words and the tiniest emotional shifts interesting? Playing Winters, your parameters are limited. You aren’t going to see him laughing maniacally or crying hysterically. His emotional band is so narrow – it’s all short-wave.”

After a while depicting this emotional reserve, Lewis was forced to remind himself “that you have been cast because the producers have seen something interesting in your eyes. But you still have to remain disciplined. If you seem inscrutable, then when the briefest hint of sadness flickers in you eye, it registers hugely. “I concentrated on being watchful and listening. That’s what makes Robert De Niro so fascinating as an actor. You really feel he is listening to the other actor. It was hard because in real life I’m bad at listening – I’m much better at talking! Of course, there were times as Winters when I was dying to burst out. I was thinking, ‘I need histrionics here – can I tap dance?’ But the skill comes in knowing when the tap dance is needed, and with Winters there is no tap dance.”

For all that, Lewis’s magnetic performance looks set to launch him into the Hollywood big time. He has certainly caught the eye of Hanks, who was greatly taken by his fellow actor’s sheer presence on screen, Hanks recollects that during the auditions, “We were looking for an enigmatic leader, a guy you can’t explain, but who explains himself by his mere presence. And in that case, you’re looking for something chromosomal. You’re looking for someone with a certain air about him that comes across even before he opens his mouth, and Damian had that without question. As soon as he sat down, we knew.”

Winters has nothing but praise for Band of Brothers, which is effectively a ten-hour account of his company’s war. “It catches it all very accurately,” he confirms. “The script is based on the book by Stephen E. Ambrose, and I have the greatest respect for him because he is painstaking in his research.

“He went over and over every fact, so the final version of his book is one hundred per cent accurate. He spent a week with me taking down my story, and afterwards he would ring me up all the time, asking, ‘Have I got this bit right?’ He was absolutely adamant about accuracy.

“In the same way, the drama is very fair. I can’t see anything wrong with it. The general feeling among the veterans is that it is a good effort. It really has done justice to the soldiers.”

Even so, watching Band of Brothers is a poignant experience for Winters. The drama can only bring back memories of colleagues long departed, and he is obviously moved by seeing it for the first time at the premiere.

He concludes with a look of deep sadness in his eyes: “There is not a day goes by when I do not think about the men who did not get to enjoy the world without war.”