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Damian Lewis: My London – Oct 28, 2005

From Brolly to Woolly

Staff | Evening Standard Magazine | October 28, 2005

Where do you live and why?

Camden. I’ve always liked this part of London. I remember, when I was younger, I used to make it along to the Electric Ballroom in Camden High Street on a Friday night and jump up and down to the rock music.

How long have you lived there?

I’ve lived in North London all my life. I grew up in St. John’s Wood, although I was at boarding school a lot of the time. Afterwards, I returned to London to study at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. I was at Guildhall at the same time as Joseph Fiennes, Ewan McGregor and Jude Law.

What was the last play you saw in London and did you enjoy it?

As You Like It at Wyndhams Theatre with my girlfriend Helen McCrory and Sienna Miller. Helen’s performance as Rosalind was quite stunning — I loved it.

What have been your most memorable London meals?

Long Sunday lunches in great pubs with good wine and good friends. I also like eating at The Wolseley on Piccadilly. I can’t really tell if I’m in a Viennese brasserie or a car showroom — but it’s very grand.

What do you miss most when you’re out of London?

The magnificent views of the city when you’re standing on the top of Primrose Hill or from Waterloo Bridge — they’re breathtaking.

What is your life philosophy?

Be brave. Regret nothing.

What items are in your winter wardrobe?

Long johns and woolly socks — especially if it’s going to get as cold as everyone is predicting this winter.

Which aftershave do you wear?

Acqua di Gio by Giorgio Armani or something by Christian Dior.

What are your current projects?

I’m currently rehearsing for a Henrik Ibsen play at the National Theatre called Pillars Of The Community, which opens on 1 November. Then I’ve got Much Ado About Nothing, which is on BBC One, also on 1 November. And there’s my film Keane which is being screened at the London Film Festival. I play a man struggling to come to terms with the disappearance of his six-year-old daughter.

Continue reading Damian Lewis: My London – Oct 28, 2005

Categories Band of Brothers Interviews Media Print Media

Damian Lewis Interview, Sunday Telegraph – Sept 30, 2001

Bananas and Marmalade 

by Emily Bearn | Sunday Telegraph | September 30, 2001

Damian Lewis is an Old Etonian who plays an American war hero in Spielberg’s latest epic, and dreams of being the next James Bond. Emily Bearn meets the young contender.

Damian Lewis (if the actor’s publicists in London, New York and Los Angeles are to be believed) is destined to be pretty big — he is already big enough to turn up for our interview two hours late. We have arranged to meet at the Midland Hotel in Manchester, which has been Lewis’s home for the past six months while he has been filming a new adaptation of Galsworthy’s The Forsyte Saga for ITV. Journalists and photographers are milling around the hotel’s palm-fronded foyer, being sporadically debriefed as to Lewis’s whereabouts by Michael, a member of his publicity team, who is directing operations from a mobile telephone. We are plied with complimentary croissants and told that the delay is attributable to Lewis’s intense filming commitments, coupled with a recent unscheduled appearance at the Manchester Royal Infirmary, where he had his appendix whipped out.

When he eventually arrives, Lewis looks calm, robust and fairly confident of the fact that he is one of the swifter-ascending stars of the small screen. He is dressed in jeans and a slightly grubby grey shirt; his orange hair is damp or fashionably slicked, and his freckles suggest he has been in the sun. He is 30, but has the sort of pleasant, negotiable looks that mean he could pass himself off as a decade older or younger. After Lewis has dispatched Michael into the Manchester drizzle to buy him bananas, we retire to a suite in which the bed has been replaced by a table bearing yet more croissants. Lewis eats two, with the rapacity of a man who has missed breakfast, pausing between bites to explain the etymology of marmalade.

We are here to discuss Band of Brothers, an American Second World War drama in which Lewis plays Major Dick Winters, the hero who led an élite US Army corps as it parachuted into France on D-Day. The ten-part series (which swallowed a budget of about £86 million and will be screened by the BBC this week) was produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks and has been attacked for — as one British tabloid put it — casting an “unashamedly American slant on the Second World War.”

Continue reading Damian Lewis Interview, Sunday Telegraph – Sept 30, 2001