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The Red Revolution: What it Really Means to Have Crimson Locks – Feb 12, 2018

New Book Celebrates All Things Ginger

by Murray Scougall | The Sunday Post | February 12, 2018

Source: Getty Images – Photo by Frederick M. Brown

Despite just 2% of the world’s population having crimson locks, they are over-represented in high-profile public roles.

But it might be too soon for them to have the last laugh, as it’s feared the redhead gene could die out by 2060.

A new book, Ginger Pride – A Red-Headed History Of The World, examines what makes red hair so special – and confirms they really are a unique breed.

“It started off as a look at historical figures with red hair, as I noticed there was a bit of a trend,” explained author and “proud ginger” Tobias Anthony.

“But I decided to widen it to look at other topics.

“One aspect I was really intrigued by was the myth-making, like accusations of being vampires and witches centuries ago.

“Redheads play a hand in almost every aspect of the world as we know it, from Vikings to royalty (by the time Queen Elizabeth I passed, Britain had seen 138 consecutive years of redheads on the throne) to medicine.

Damian Lewis said, “The redhead stock is very high at the moment. This might be a unique moment in recent history, redheads everywhere are doing well – Prince Harry, Ed Sheeran, Julianne Moore, me, Lily Cole.”

“I think once you have this type of myth and aura connected to ginger hair, there’s some attraction to it. There is something that makes you stand out and seems to captivate people in a certain way and it makes sense to want to ride on the coat-tails of that.”

Continue reading The Red Revolution: What it Really Means to Have Crimson Locks – Feb 12, 2018

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Damian Lewis: Making it Big on Small Screen, The Irish Examiner, October 14, 2012

Making it big on the small screen

It’s been a slow and steady rise to stardom for Damian Lewis. But now he’s hit the jackpot with an Emmy win for his role in Homeland. He talks to Craig McLean about fame, fatherhood and fan clubs.

Continue reading Damian Lewis: Making it Big on Small Screen, The Irish Examiner, October 14, 2012

Categories Homeland Media Print Media

Soldiering on: Damian Lewis in Homeland, The Telegraph, February 4, 2012

Soldiering on: Damian Lewis in Homeland

After his breakthrough 10 years ago in Band of Brothers, Damian Lewis’s finest work has been for television, his latest role that of a US Marine held captive for eight years

Damian Lewis in Homeland

Photo: Channel 4
Damian Lewis opens our conversation with a sheepish mention of his ardent admirers. ‘I’ve a set of fans who call themselves – you’re not allowed to laugh – Damian Bunnies.’ Their name seems to be a reference to those other copper-top characters, the Duracell Bunnies. They have been following him since his 2001 breakthrough in Steven Spielberg’s acclaimed Second World War series Band of Brothers, ‘and they’re absolutely lovely. In the end, I realised they knew so much about me, I let two of them run a fan site.’
Categories Homeland Media Print Media

Damian Lewis Homeland Q+A: “The final episode is both physically and emotionally violent.”, Grantland, December 16, 2011

Damian Lewis Homeland Q+A: “The final episode is both psychologically and emotionally violent.”

by ANDY GREENWALD

KENT SMITH/SHOWTIMEDamien Lewis

Speaking to Damian Lewis on the telephone is disconcerting — and not because Lewis, in his role as troubled maybe-terrorist Sgt. Nicholas Brody, appears likely to blow himself to bits on Sunday’s Homeland season finale. The redheaded actor has an All-American bearing on television but in reality is an eloquent Englishman with a plummy accent more suited to Boodles & Tonics than boot camp. Lewis had so much to say about his complicated character that he barely required any questions before pontificating on the psychology of suicide bombers, what Brody is really thinking, and how he and Claire Danes are like two broken birds.

Continue reading Damian Lewis Homeland Q+A: “The final episode is both physically and emotionally violent.”, Grantland, December 16, 2011

Categories Homeland Media Print Media

Homeland’s Damian Lewis on ‘American Damian,’ Rock-Star Fantasies, and Disturbing Sex Scenes, Vulture, November 11, 2011

Homeland’s Damian Lewis on ‘American Damian,’ Rock-Star Fantasies, and Disturbing Sex Scenes

By Rebecca Milzoff

Damian Lewis. Photo: Mike Coppola/Getty Images

For a born and bred Brit, Damian Lewis has carved out a remarkably steady career playing dyed-in-the-wool Americans, memorably in Band of Brothers and on Life (he’s slated to play Union general James B. MacPherson in the upcoming Civil War mini-series To Appomattox, too). He’s added another super-convincing tortured good old boy to his résumé as Marine Sergeant Nicholas Brody, the possibly turned, ever-mysterious ex-prisoner of war at the center of Showtime’s Homeland, which stars Claire Danes as the CIA agent who’s onto/into him. On a hectic press day in Manhattan, Lewis spoke to Vulture about playing Brody, his rock-star fantasies, and filming disturbing sex scenes.

Continue reading Homeland’s Damian Lewis on ‘American Damian,’ Rock-Star Fantasies, and Disturbing Sex Scenes, Vulture, November 11, 2011

Categories Media Print Media The Baker

Damian Lewis: Slow Cooking, The Independent, February 26, 2008

Damian Lewis: Slow Cooking

Seven years after Tom Hanks told him he’d be the first red-haired movie star, Damian Lewis is making his mark in ‘The Baker’.

 By James Rampton – The Independent – 26 February 2008

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Damian Lewis is deep in conversation with his brother Gareth, who has just directed the actor in his latest film, The Baker. So how was it for the actor working with his younger sibling? “We’ve actually had a ball working together,” Lewis declares, as Gareth bids us farewell. “Maybe at the end of each working day, the Coen brothers throw knives at pictures of each other when they get home, but Gareth and I had such fun. It was like being kids again, only more sophisticated.” He stops and grins. “Perhaps I should say, ‘only marginally more sophisticated’! We certainly have more expensive toys now.”

Continue reading Damian Lewis: Slow Cooking, The Independent, February 26, 2008

Categories Life Media Print Media

Damian Lewis is in For Life – Oct 4, 2007

Damian Lewis is in For ‘Life’

The Associated Press – Today – October 4, 2007

It wouldn’t be hard to feel jealous of LAPD Detective Charlie Crews.

He’s got millions in the bank, a huge house, no lack of female companionship — and a Zen attitude to keep him mellow.

On the other hand: Crews spent a dozen brutal years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit (his hefty cash settlement came from the state of California when his lawyer got him cleared). His marriage was over. And now that he’s back on the job, co-workers rudely speculate on why he returned — and don’t trust his motives. Nothing to envy there.

But Crews makes the best of life, and then some. That’s what “Life” is about.

Continue reading Damian Lewis is in For Life – Oct 4, 2007

Categories Keane Media Print Media

Red Hot: The Irresistible Rise of Damian Lewis – Sept 8, 2006

Damian Lewis: The Chameleon Performer

by Liz Hoggard | The Independent | September 8, 2006

Damian Lewis is an intense chap, capable of conveying a huge range of emotions with the smallest gesture. He’s hotly tipped for an Oscar for his new film. And he’s a real gent. Just don’t call him posh, whatever you do.

“Ask him about that intense thing he does with his eyes,” a female journalist suggested when she heard I was interviewing the actor Damian Lewis. What’s striking about Lewis is how much he manages to convey by doing so very little. There is stillness about him on screen, a faraway look that can evoke anger or desire or – if you saw his rollicking performance as Benedict in BBC1’s modern-day version of Much Ado about Nothing – sheer hilarity.

The press love to brand Lewis as an arrogant posh boy. Like David Cameron, he went to Eton. But, among his generation of actors, no one does grief and repressed emotion so well. In Spielberg’s Second World War epic, Band of Brothers, he played an American soldier facing up to fear with a quiet certainty (it won him a Golden Globe nomination). He was the bewildered newlywed who doesn’t understand why his marriage is falling apart in Hearts and Bones. And in the remake of The Forsyte Saga, he did the unthinkable – making the brutal Soames sympathetic.

For several years now, 35-year-old Lewis has been a successful actor on the verge of becoming a major star. Unlike Ewan McGregor or Joseph Fiennes, his contemporaries at London’s Guildhall drama school, you might still walk past him in the street. But all that should change with the release of his new film Keane: his performance is already sparking Oscar rumours in the States.

Continue reading Red Hot: The Irresistible Rise of Damian Lewis – Sept 8, 2006

Categories Colditz Media Personal and Family Life Print Media

Damian Lewis: ‘British women are weird’, Sunday Mirror, March 27, 2005

DAMIAN LEWIS: `British women are weird’ Actor and red-hot redhead Damian Lewis, 34, talks about his kinky fans, pinching girls’ bums, and why he’s a born liar.

by Louise Burke, Sunday Mirror, March 27, 2005

You star in new ITV drama From Colditz With Love, as a prisoner of war who joins the Secret Service. Are you a gadget man?

Damien Lewis: I like my sports car. I just got a little Mazda MX5 – it’s only a cheap and cheerful one really. It’s titanium, a sort of greyish colour. I’m not exactly obsessed by toys. I don’t have a plasma TV, just a normal one, though I suppose it’s still quite big. I do have an i-Pod, although I need to learn how to download my music. You can pay people to do that can’t you? I heard you can pay someone pounds 200 and they’ll download you 5,000 songs. I think I’ll do that, because to be honest, I’m a bit clueless.

Is it true you were asked to audition for the new Bond movie?

DL: That isn’t strictly true. I have never auditioned for the role of James Bond. It would be difficult not to consider it – helicopter rides to sunny locations and let’s not forget the Bond girls. Halle Berry was pretty good in that bikini, but my favourite was Grace Jones.

Continue reading Damian Lewis: ‘British women are weird’, Sunday Mirror, March 27, 2005

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Great British Hopes: Damian Lewis – Feb 11, 1995

Great British Hopes: Damian Lewis

by Kate Bassett – The Times – 11 February 1995

Damian Lewis

Profession: Actor

Age: 23

Claim to fame: The New York Times hailed him as “The new Ralph Fiennes? The next Hugh Grant?”

Distinctive features: Six foot three. Flaming red hair. “I wasn’t aware of my hair until critics started talking about it as part of the performance,” says Lewis good-humouredly. “Maybe there’s a whole play going on on top of my head.”

Continue reading Great British Hopes: Damian Lewis – Feb 11, 1995