Categories Billions Interviews Print Media

Billions Star Damian Lewis Reveals How He Spends His Leading Man Money – June 16, 2018

Playing an Anti-Hero on Mega Money Drama Series Billions has Polarized Fans but Damian Loved the Chance to Turn Bad

by Michele Manelis | News Corp Australia Network | June 16, 2018

Source: Showtime

Damian Lewis can plot the impact of his lead role on hit US drama series, Billions from one season – and continent – to the next.

“When I’m in New York and I walk around, people go, ‘Yeah, Bobby Axelrod, yeah, love you man!’, and when I’m in England, where I live, people go, ‘Oh, Bobby Axelrod, you’re a real arsehole!’” he tells TV Guide.

After wrapping season three, the former Homeland star adds, laughing “I think you’ll find that everyone’s an a-hole.”

Continue reading Billions Star Damian Lewis Reveals How He Spends His Leading Man Money – June 16, 2018

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Rake Magazine Interview: A True Leading Man – Feb 15, 2018

Easy Company

by Tom Chamberlin | The Rake Magazine | February, 2018

Source: The Rake Magazine – Photo by: Kalle Gustafsson

In an exclusive interview with The Rake, Damian Lewis tells Tom Chamberlin why we all, in spite of ourselves, love an anti-hero.

Lewis – from Life to Homeland, Wolf Hall to Billions – has become the finest purveyor of modern drama’s moral ambiguities. In fact, writes Tom Chamberlin, if you can think of an actor who has influenced our golden age of television more than him, speak up…

Among the more ambiguous archetypes of the celluloid age, that of ‘leading man’ is perhaps the least defined. Far from the specific criteria of commedia dell’arte and melodrama, in which the characters are demarcated (bad guy = black hat and moustachioed, etc.), the leading man is purely subjective. Arguably he is the origin of celebrity, pulling screen presence into the limelight of fame. But the list of leading men over the years has shown that no colour, size, hair, manner or cultural identity has ever had dominion over the sobriquet. That is until Damian Lewis entered the fray. For Lewis is a man who, above anything else, is an exemplar of leadership and integrity at a time when the acting world could use a dose of it.

Damian Lewis takes charge of rooms when he enters them. Photoshoots with celebrities are often led by either the photographer, who squeezes every image he or she can from the available time; the stylist, whose job is to make sure a well-curated variety of clothes appears in the magazine; or the publicist, who tends to be the powerbroker. The ‘talent’ can often struggle through the day (except, of course, former Rake cover subjects), regarding the experience as a necessary nuisance. Not so with Mr. Lewis.

Continue reading Rake Magazine Interview: A True Leading Man – Feb 15, 2018