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
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
THE premise is intriguing. A United States marine, missing in action for eight years and presumed dead, is rescued from a terrorist compound. He has been held hostage by al-Qaeda for all that time.
Continue reading Damian Lewis: Bringing the Fight back home, Sydney Morning Herald, January 12, 2012
Original article at WSJ
Damian Lewis and Claire Danes in a scene from “Homeland.”On the new hit Showtime drama “Homeland,” actor Damian Lewis plays U.S. Marine Sergeant Nicholas Brody, a former POW suffering from a serious case of post-traumatic stress disorder following eight years of captivity in Afghanistan. Brody, who may or may not be working for al Qaeda, is being covertly followed by a paranoid CIA agent played by Claire Danes, as the series explores complicated issues such as the price of freedom, the psychological scars of war, and the post-9/11 limits on privacy.
Continue reading Inside the Mind Game of Homeland, WSJ Speakeasy, October 28, 2011
Damian Lewis is making me a cup of tea. Dressed in Ugg boots, a checked shirt and a stylish knit cardigan, he’s every inch the metrosexual, cool guy about town: down with the kids in more ways than one, he has to head off after the interview to read his children a bedtime story.
Continue reading Damian Lewis: Cherwell Salutes You – May 11, 2011
The ex-Etonian talks schooldays, silly movies and choosing his own career
By Dominic Cavendish, The Telegraph, November 24, 2009
Damian Lewis talks about appearing with Keira Knightley as she makes her West End debut in an updated version of Moliere’s The Misanthrope.
Damian Lewis could well be the luckiest actor in London. Or the unluckiest. Luckiest in that he’s about to play the lead in The Misanthrope, which – with tickets flying out of the box-office at record-breaking speed – must be accounted one of the most eagerly awaited West End openings of the year. Unluckiest because the main reason for all the mounting hullabaloo is his co-star – Keira Knightley.
While there’s no disputing the combined allure of the assembled cast – Tara Fitzgerald and Dominic Rowan are also names to conjure with – when it comes to added spice, Knightley’s promised theatrical debut is eye-wateringly hot stuff. The prospect of a live encounter with the ravishing Pirates of the Caribbean star, recently ranked the second highest paid actress in Hollywood, has tipped the internet exchange price for tickets into triple figures. We’re potentially in the same realm of hysteria as that which enveloped Jude Law’s Hamlet, when fans queued through the night for a chance to bag a day-seat.
If the flame-haired Lewis, 38, feels any anxiety or concern about the fact that Knightley looks set to be the centre of much frenzied attention in the coming weeks, he’s not confessing to it when we meet. His last stage appearance, as the inwardly tortured businessman Karsten Bernick in Ibsen’s Pillars of the Community earned him rave reviews at the National in 2005. The part of the people-hating Alceste – the biliously witty anti-hero reconceived as a hip playwright in Martin Crimp’s smart update of Moliere’s 1666 classic comedy – should cement his reputation as one of theatre’s finest talents. But will he get his chance to capitalise on the opportunity?
Read the rest of the article here.
Damian Lewis, star of ITV’s new US series Life, tells Michael Deacon about his role as an ex-convict, being a British actor in America and his love of bicycle
Charlie Crews, the character Damian Lewis plays in Life – ITV’s new drama import from America – is perpetually defeated by modern technology. Lewis isn’t too hot on it himself. The London-born 37-year-old can’t stand Facebook, worries that video games are a threat to the film business and struggles with text messages. When we meet he is wrestling with his mobile phone: ‘Sorry, I’ve just got to text my sister-in-law, who’s a tyrant – if I don’t text back within half an hour she shouts at me,’ he says. ‘My text response time is usually about two days.’ His mobile, grey and chunky, is a model so antiquated that most teenagers would probably mistake it for a TV remote control.
Continue reading Damian Lewis: Life, The Telegraph, October 25, 2008
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
by James Mottram | Metro.co.uk | February 26, 2008
The actor and producer of The Baker talks to James Mottram about family matters, the brutalising nature of working in LA and taking control of his own destiny.
Damian Lewis is pacing back and forth across his London hotel suite. ‘I’ve drunk a lot of cappuccino,’ he says, running his hands through that distinct crop of red hair. When he finally sits, he starts playing with a ball of Blu Tack that he gets all over his fingers, forcing him to dash to the bathroom to wipe them clean. If it’s a case of nerves, it’s understandable: his first film as actor-producer, The Baker, is due out this week. Written and directed by his younger brother Gareth, it’s a real Lewis family affair. ‘Let’s hope more people than just the family go and see it,’ he retorts. ‘I have a big family, though I don’t think it’ll quite do the numbers.’
Continue reading Rising to the Challenge: Damian Lewis, Film Interview – Feb 26, 2008
by Liz Hoggard | The Independent | September 8, 2006
“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
by Claire Hill | Western Mail | May 6, 2006
Move over the Coen Brothers, there’s a new film making duo in town, and this time they’re Welsh. Actor Damian Lewis has teamed up with his baby brother Gareth to make their first film together. Claire Hill joined them on location in their beloved Wales
Damian Lewis’s legs are half sticking out of a makeshift vent shaft as the actor attaches knee pads underneath his all- black ensemble.
A gun is visible and is just peeping out from the band of his trousers. Next to his feet, rolls of silver gaffer tape and wires are scattered on the floor. Directly in front of him, in the old paper mill, tucked at the back of a Cardiff industrial estate, someone fashions a gun holster out of an old yoga mat.
Continue reading Move Over Coen Brothers For the New Kids on the Set
by Natalie Theo | Factory Magazine | Fall Issue, 2005
Damian Lewis really wants to be Widow Twanky. Thankfully Factory has asked him to camp it up as an all-dancing James Bond hero for its shoot at the Dorchester Hotel’s London ballroom. “I went through a lot of pantomime when I was young – I mostly wanted to be Widow Twanky”. Well, as I say, thank God we are more 007 today. You see I am blushingly helping Damian Lewis into a pair of elegant black Ralph Lauren trousers, shirt and diamond studded De Beers cufflinks. We are tucked away in the dark refines of the Dorchester ballroom’s coat check cubicle.
The men’s loos are unavailable for trouser tucking. Better to be tucking him into a Ralph Lauren number rather than a figure moulding pair of panto tights. Lewis has gamely agreed to swirl six dashing young actresses dripping in De Beers diamonds and slinking about in Ralph Lauren eveningwear for the day with his very own barman, sent along on orders from Dublin courtesy of Jameson Irish Whiskey, to see him through. His lead role as Major Richard Winters in HBO’s Band of Brothers, produced and part directed by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, precedes a slew of feature films due for September and early 2006 releases: Lasse Hallstrom’s An Unfinished Life; Brides produced by Martin Scorsese; Lodge Kerrigan’s Keane; Phillip Haas’ The Situation; and Martha Fiennes Chromophobia. So I can’t quite believe Widow Twanky is the be all and end all of the ultimate hero situation.