Damian Lewis
Actor, Dad, Redhead, and Ping Pong Champion
Categories Billions Interviews Once Upon a Time in Hollywood Print Media

Damian Lewis: Financial Times Interview – April 5, 2019

The ‘Billions’ star on schooldays with David Cameron, playing conflicted characters — and rumours of 007

by Janan Ganesh | Financial Times | April 5, 2019

“What am I?” demands Damian Lewis, in the Yonkers vowels of Bobby Axelrod, the hedge fund manager he plays in Billions. “Chopped liver?” We have not fallen out. It is the presence of the item on the menu that sets up his riff on the Americanism.

The actor you also know as a Renaissance king (Wolf Hall) and an al-Qaeda convert (Homeland) is seated under a wall-mounted ram’s head in Fischer’s, a portal into antiquated Mitteleuropa on London’s Marylebone High Street, where it all but heckles the modernities around it. From a room that suggests an Orient Express dining carriage, Lewis looks out on to a Diptyque, an Aesop and a Bang & Olufsen as I ask him why British actors do so well in America. “It’s luck, it’s innate, it’s a bit of hard work,” he guesses. “It’s nothing to do with being classically trained.”

He admires Christian Bale (“There’s something quite extreme innately in him”) and vies with Tom Hiddleston and Idris Elba in the bookies’ guesswork as to the next James Bond. Politely, he smiles through my thesis that Brits grow up hearing more accents than almost any other nation, honing an ear for them that amounts to a thespian advantage. If he is not quite sold, he is at least open to the idea of performance as a national trait. “Is there a clown in the British character that there isn’t in America? I think there is. There’s a clown in us somewhere.”

Continue reading Damian Lewis: Financial Times Interview – April 5, 2019

Categories Billions Homeland Interviews Print Media

One in a Billion: Cigar Aficionado Interview – Jan 1, 2016

Killer Charm and Killer Instinct

by Marshall Fine | Cigar Aficionado | January/February 2016 Issue

Heads turn as Damian Lewis strides into a Le Pain Quotidien franchise in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood.

Lewis, in sunglasses, walks the length of the restaurant unmolested to a table in the rear. It’s mid-afternoon and the lunchtime crowd has thinned on this summery late-October day. Still, it seems an unlikely place to meet one of the hottest actors in television. Asked how he happened to choose this particular spot to meet, Lewis, sunglasses now off, smiles quizzically and says, “I thought you chose it.”

Tall and surprisingly rangy, Lewis has a slow grin, and blue eyes that can look both warm and icily transparent in the right light. His coppery hair actually appears to have a slightly chestnut cast this particular day. Normally Lewis is the most recognizable red-haired actor working today.

Continue reading One in a Billion: Cigar Aficionado Interview – Jan 1, 2016

Categories Desire Media Print Media

Damian Lewis interview: the Homeland star unleashes his inner James Bond for Jaguar, The Telegraph, March 12, 2013

Damian Lewis interview: the Homeland star unleashes his inner James Bond for Jaguar

Is the world ready for a red-haired 007? Did the last series of ‘Homeland’ go too far? And why is he racing the new Jaguar F-Type around a Chilean desert? Damian Lewis reveals all to Craig McLean

Lewis cuts a Bond-esque figure with the new Jaguar F-type on the set of Desire
Lewis cuts a Bond-esque figure with the new Jaguar F-type on the set of Desire Photo: Nicole Nodland

Categories Media Personal and Family Life Print Media

Vogue Archive: No Place Like Homeland – Jan 20, 2015

Damian Lewis and Helen McCrory British Vogue Interview

by Staff | British Vogue | January 20, 2015

“Do you know, I think you might wear a suit better than any man I’ve ever met.” In the intimate and strangely forbidden confines of a lift at the National Theatre, Helen McCrory’s heavily made-up hazel eyes are drinking in her husband’s tall, tailored frame.

“Thank you,” he replies, faintly awkwardly, looking down at the same Tom Ford tuxedo he wore to accept the best actor Emmy award only last month. “Does this mean you want me to do all the washing-up for a week?”

A gypsy laugh bubbles up from deep inside McCrory’s tiny dancer’s body.

“No, my darling, of course not! Just the bedtime stories…”

It’s a rare day of togetherness and, despite a stoic, unwaveringly professional determination to get the photographs absolutely right – freezing winter winds notwithstanding – Mr and Mrs Damian Lewis are enjoying every minute of this short holiday from work and the parenting of their two children, Manon, six, and Gulliver, five. Curling herself into her husband, McCrory locks eyes with him as he puts a protective hand between her shoulder blades and gently rubs her slender back. They seem in a little world of their own on the top of Waterloo Bridge, talking quietly and constantly to each other, oblivious to both the photographer’s lens and the gawping Londoners who keep falling into the traffic in their astonishment at getting a real-life Homeland fix in the middle of the week.

When one frazzled woman with a pushchair stops dead in her tracks between the couple and the camera and stares, open-mouthed, at the nation’s favourite redhead as if he were a painting, they laugh tolerantly until she manages to pull herself together. This, after all, is their reality. And, for a couple who were recently invited to a state dinner for David Cameron at the White House and were sat not, as they had suspected, somewhere “between the kitchens and the loo” but on President Obama’s table, nothing is terribly surprising. “He did, yes. Yes, he did. He did say it was his favourite programme,” Lewis later admits, between hungry mouthfuls of chicken stew and gulps of red wine in a nearby South Bank brasserie.

Continue reading Vogue Archive: No Place Like Homeland – Jan 20, 2015

Categories Homeland Media Print Media

Interview: Homeland Actor Damian Lewis on Season 2 and More, AssignmentX, December 10, 2012

Interview: HOMELAND actor Damian Lewis on Season 2 and more

The Emmy-winning actor talks about Brody’s choices

Damian Lewis and Claire Danes in HOMELAND - Season 2 - "Two Hate" | ©2012 Showtime/Kent Smith

Damian Lewis and Claire Danes in HOMELAND – Season 2 – “Two Hate” | ©2012 Showtime/Kent Smith

British actor Damian Lewis took home this year for Emmy for Outstanding Actor in a Drama for his portrayal of Nicholas Brody, American war hero turned secret terrorist in Season 1 of Showtime’s HOMELAND. The show also won five other Emmys, including Outstanding Drama and Outstanding Actress for Claire Danes as Carrie Mathison, the CIA agent who is onto Brody – but also carries a torch for him.
Continue reading Interview: Homeland Actor Damian Lewis on Season 2 and More, AssignmentX, December 10, 2012

Categories Homeland Media Print Media

‘Homeland’ Star Damian Lewis: ‘The Walls Close In’ During Season Two, Rolling Stone, October 7, 2012

‘Homeland’ Star Damian Lewis: ‘The Walls Close In’ During Season Two

‘Honestly, people are going to be surprised again,’ says Lewis. ‘It’s pretty accelerated.’

Damian Lewis at the 64th Primetime Emmy Awards in Los Angeles. Jason LaVeris/FilmMagic
Categories Homeland Media Print Media

TV Personality: Damian Lewis, GQUK, October 2, 2012

Original article at British GQ

TV Personality: Damian Lewis

Categories Homeland Media Print Media

Interview: Damian Lewis, actor and star of The Sweeney, The Scotsman, September 2, 2012

Interview: Damian Lewis, actor and star of The Sweeney Damian Lewis, actor and star of The Sweeney.

12:56 Sunday 02 September 2012

FRESH from the US hit Homeland, which won him fans in high places, Damian Lewis is relishing his role in a great British classic set on his home turf Continue reading Interview: Damian Lewis, actor and star of The Sweeney, The Scotsman, September 2, 2012

Categories Homeland Media Print Media

The Look: Mr Damian Lewis, Mr. Porter, May 8, 2012

THE LOOK: MR DAMIAN LEWIS

by Mr Sanjiv Bhattacharya
MAY 8, 2012

Mr Damian Lewis needs no convincing that Homeland is a huge hit, perhaps even a career high. Not because of the critical praise or the awards, or even his Best Actor nomination at the Golden Globes last year. But because in March he was invited to dinner at the White House, along with Mr George Clooney and main guest Prime Minister David Cameron. Continue reading The Look: Mr Damian Lewis, Mr. Porter, May 8, 2012

Categories Homeland Media Print Media

Damian Lewis: ‘You know you’ve hit the zeitgeist when Obama is your number one fan’, Evening Standard, April 2, 2012

Damian Lewis: ‘You know you’ve hit the zeitgeist when Obama is your number one fan’

The star of Sunday night’s most addictive drama, talks to Craig McLean about playing a Muslim, living between LA and London and why he couldn’t say no to Homeland

CRAIG MCLEAN
Monday 2 April 2012 11:01

Categories Interviews Media Personal and Family Life Print Media

Interview: This Much I Know – April 4, 2009

Carrot Tops and Fishing Turds Out of the Bathtub

by Tony Horkins | The Guardian | April 4, 2009

Damian Lewis, actor, 38, Los Angeles

I’ve got Wikipedia insight. I used to be able to sit at dinner parties and talk at length about a novel, having just read the jacket in a bookshop. Now it’s like I’ve got the jacket and the inside cover as well, but nothing more.

Boarding school gives you precocious social skills for life. You’re separated from your parents and you learn about peer groups and gain confidence. When I was in my 20s people would remark on it, which I now realise was them remarking on your awful precociousness. I’m undecided as to the damage it possibly does to an eight-year-old, especially learning not to cry.

Being with Americans is a bit like hanging out with a teenager. They haven’t quite developed the confidence to have a sense of humour about themselves, which just comes with age. And they also have that forward-thrusting energy a teenager has.

Continue reading Interview: This Much I Know – April 4, 2009