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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

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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 Media Print Media The Baker

Move Over Coen Brothers For the New Kids on the Set

Lewis Filming Duo

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

Categories An Unfinished Life Chromophobia Gallery Magazine Media Print Media The Forsyte Saga The Situation

Let’s Dance – Fall 2005

Damian Lewis at The Dorchester

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.

Continue reading Let’s Dance – Fall 2005

Categories Media Print Media The Forsyte Saga

Damian Lewis Interview, Sunday Express, May 25, 2003

Damian Lewis looks terrible. With his copper-coloured hair slicked back and his fair skin etched with lines, he could pass for 60. Which is a tribute to the make-up artists who have just aged him for 30 years for his part in The Forsyte Saga. Continue reading Damian Lewis Interview, Sunday Express, May 25, 2003

Categories Dreamcatcher Media Print Media The Forsyte Saga

PBS Masterpiece Interview with Damian Lewis, May 2003

From a Repressed Tortured Soul to a Possessed College Professor

by Staff | PBS Masterpiece | May, 2003

Whether they realized it or not, viewers of the popular Steven Spielberg/Tom Hanks miniseries Band of Brothers were watching an English actor in the starring role of Major Richard Winters, the taciturn American hero of an airborne unit during World War II. The real Major Winters is salt of the earth from Pennsylvania. The actor Damian Lewis is from London’s Abbey Road and attended Eton. Otherwise, you’d never know the difference.

While on hiatus between the production of series one and two of The Forsyte Saga, Lewis played Jonesy, a possessed college professor in the forthcoming film of Stephen King’s Dreamcatcher.

Lewis recently talked by phone from London about the Forsyte remake, Soames’s inner life, and what it’s like to play an alien.

Continue reading PBS Masterpiece Interview with Damian Lewis, May 2003

Categories Band of Brothers Dreamcatcher Interviews Media Print Media The Forsyte Saga

Guardian Interview: Shooting Star – March 10, 2002

Shooting star

by Jay Rayner | The Guardian | 

Watching Damian Lewis leading the men of Easy Company to victory in Spielberg’s WWII epic Band of Brothers, you’d never guess he went to Eton and attended drama school with Ewan MacGregor. Now, though, he is returning to more familiar territory as the iconic Soames in The Forsyte Saga.

The middle-aged Italian waitress clearly does not recognise the actor she is shouting at or, if she does, she has had enough experience at being a sour-faced waitress not to show it. This is the second time she has asked Damian Lewis to choose what he wants for lunch and it is the second time he has asked for a few more minutes. ‘Look,’ she says, with a fearsome shrug, arms spread wide. ‘We are busy. You don’t order now, then the kitchen, it become busy. You wait too long for your food. You get cross.’ There is a convincing logic here: the small, smokey cafe in London’s St James’s is indeed already crammed with people.

Continue reading Guardian Interview: Shooting Star – March 10, 2002

Categories Band of Brothers Dreamcatcher Forsyte Saga Hamlet Media Print Media The Forsyte Saga

Damian Lewis Interview: USA Weekend Magazine – March 10 2002

Black Hawk Down, Elvis, Steve McQueen, and Broadway

by Evelyn Poitevent | USA Weekend Magazine |  March 10, 2002

“Band of Brothers” star Damian Lewis, 31, has been touted by everyone from the “New York Times” to “People” magazine as Hollywood’s new golden child. And rightfully so. The British actor — a veteran of London’s Guildhall School (where he studied drama with Ewan McGregor and Joseph Fiennes), the Birmingham Repertory and Royal Shakespeare Company (where he befriended Ralph Fiennes) — has not only proved himself worthy of the stage during the last decade, but has also made his mark on British television (BBC’s “Warriors” and “Hearts and Bones”). “Band of Brothers” brought him to American audiences — and rest assured, that was just the beginning. We caught up with the humorous, fun-loving (yet humble) redhead, who’s currently filming a Stephen King thriller, “Dreamcatcher,” in Canada. Continue reading Damian Lewis Interview: USA Weekend Magazine – March 10 2002

Categories Band of Brothers Media Print Media

Man of the Month: Damian Lewis, A Brit of the Action, GQ UK November 2001

“British women are just the best,” announces Damian Lewis, who you will soon know as Lieutenant Richard Winters from BBC2′s Band of Brothers. Moments later he ruminates about getting to grips with his first pair of fake breasts in LA. “I almost let out a yelp,” he says. “I thought, ‘These are like footballs!’”

One can forgive Lewis for obsessing over the female form. Last year he spent eight months with thousands of mud-caked grunts on the set of Tom Hanks’ and Steven Spielberg’s 70m pounds companion to Saving Private Ryan. Even his Eton College education couldn’t prepare him for the testosterone on the set of the ten-part WWII drama.

“Actors can be flaky, but the bonding was almost spiritual,” he says. Continue reading Man of the Month: Damian Lewis, A Brit of the Action, GQ UK November 2001

Categories Band of Brothers Media Print Media The Forsyte Saga

A minute with… Damian Lewis, Woman’s Own, October 8, 2001

A minute with … Damian Lewis

by Tim Oglethorpe, Woman’s Own, October 8, 2001

A former Eton schoolboy, British-born Damian is set for international stardom for his role as American war hero, Dick Winters, in Steven Spielberg’s 10-part 65 million TV series Band of Brothers. He’s currently filming an adaption of the 1960’s television hit The Forsyte Saga

Tell us about Band of Brothers.
My character, American Dick Winters, is a leader of a crack paratrooper unit which paved the way for the Allied advance across Europe during the Second World War.

How tough was the preparation for it?
They treated us, as much as possible, like real soldiers. We spent 10 days in boot camp in Aldershot. It was tough -getting up at 6am, doing 80 press-ups, going for a run, taking a cold shower and then continuing the day in much the same way. But I think it was necessary to do. It created a bond among the actors playing the soldiers and it also made us physically fitter. Continue reading A minute with… Damian Lewis, Woman’s Own, October 8, 2001

Categories Band of Brothers Media Print Media

Command Performance, The Sunday Times, September 30, 2001

Command performance

by Jeff Dawson, The Sunday Times, September 30, 2001

Jeff Dawson meets Damian Lewis, the British star of Spielberg’s Band of Brothers, the most costly TV series ever.

Tony To, the executive producer of Band of Brothers, reckons Damian Lewis is like “a young Steve McQueen”. At the very least, the actor turns up to our interview on a motorbike. “I love it when they talk like that,” he laughs, wrestling off his waterproofs in a north London Thai restaurant. “I mean, Steve McQueen’s the epitome of cool, isn’t he? Raced his car, shagged women…”

Aged 29, posh (his words), blokey, but ultra-confident in that public-school way, these are strange days for Damian Lewis. In one breath, he will refer to the house he shares with his brother in London’s unglamorous Kensal Green. In the next, he’ll mention his new chums “Tom” and “Steven”, tossing off their names as if they were a pair of drinking muckers rather than Messrs Hanks and Spielberg. It’s under their patronage that he has suddenly found himself paraded around Hollywood as the Next Big Thing. Continue reading Command Performance, The Sunday Times, September 30, 2001

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