Press Archive

Hello! Magazine
19 March 2002

Damian Lewis (Soames Forsyte)

The icy, repressed Soames Forsyte is played by Damian Lewis, the heart-throb star of “Band of Brothers.” “It’s a cracking yarn!” he says of why he wanted to make the role his.

“Soames is a challenge to play because he has few redeeming features. He has the heart of a shrivelled walnut! He sees everything as property and his wife Irene is certainly that.”

The 31-year-old Lewis was in Hollywood, “whoring myself,” as he puts it, after his success in the Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks World War II project “Band of Brothers” when the production team from “The Forsyte Saga” came calling. “From that point it all happened very quickly,” he recounts. “We had a meeting, they asked me if I wanted to be Soames and I said “Yes.” Then I had the enviable job of sitting there with strings or gorgeous and talented actresses reading for the part of Irene.”

Now back in Hollywood, Damian is filming a starring role in “Dreamcatcher,” the film adaptation of the Stephen King novel. His career has climbed steadily since he left the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, starring in hit series such as “Hearts and Bones” and “Hamlet” on Broadway with Ralph Fiennes. Spielberg spotted him in Hamlet and later cast him as Lieutenant Richard Winters in “Band of Brothers.”

“Now I don’t really have to audition for jobs,” says the red-head. “I just have these very grown-up meetings. It’s not that everyone’s suddenly offering me jobs outright, it’s just that now I tend to be one of three or four they’re considering, rather than one of 250 who’s up for the job.”

The role of Soames appealed to Damian because of its ambiguity. “I don’t expect the audience to like him, but I want them to understand him,” says the actor. “He’s not sympathetic, he’s emotionally repressed and supercilious–he has a smug way of dealing with people. But you also see him genuinely distressed and in pain, driven to the desperate act of raping his wife. It’s the act by which he’s judged, and the series will only become interesting if the audience struggles between hating him for it, and sympathizing with what’s driven him to it. If they simply detest him, it will be a lot less interesting.”

Damian is unlikely to abandon the UK and his girlfriend, Channel 4 presenter and producer, Katie Razzall to live in Tinseltown, though, although he is currently homeless, having sold the house he shared with his brother. “I think I can make “it” happen, whatever “it” is,” he says, adding, “I’d like to have an international career. Until we’ve got some kind of reaction to “The Forsyte Saga,” I’ve no idea what kind of direction I’ll go in.”