Categories CBE Charity Helen Honors Philanthropy Print Media

Damian Lewis Made CBE in Queen’s Birthday Honours After Glittering Acting Career

Damian Shares CBE With Dear Helen McCrory

by Lily Waddell | Evening Standard | June 1, 2022

Damian Lewis has been made a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) after an acting career that has spanned Second World War epics, terrorism thrillers and period dramas. The 51-year-old television, film and stage star has been honoured in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List for his services to both drama and charity.

Among his best known roles are Army Major Richard Winters in the HBO miniseries Band Of Brothers, Nicholas Brody in the Showtime series Homeland and Henry VIII in Wolf Hall. Lewis told the PA news agency:

“What a great honour to be awarded the CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List for services to drama and for the charity work that I have carried out over the years and during the pandemic with my late wife, Helen McCrory. Thank you very much. She and I are both thrilled.”

He and his late wife Helen McCrory are co-founders of FeedNHS, an initiative working with restaurant Leon on the campaign of the same name in a bid to provide NHS workers with meals during the coronavirus crisis. He shares the CBE honour with Helen:

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Categories CBE Charity Helen Honors Philanthropy Print Media

Damian Lewis Honoured by Queen Elizabeth

CBE: Services to Both Drama and Charity

by Michael Holden | Reuters | May 31, 2022

LONDON, May 31 (Reuters) – Actor Damian Lewis, author Ian Rankin and former Northern Ireland first minister Arlene Foster were among more than 1,100 people recognised by Britain’s Queen Elizabeth in her annual birthday honours. The list, which is issued to mark the 96-year-old monarch’s official birthday, honours recipients for their “outstanding” contributions; most awards recognise public service or community work.

This year’s honours come ahead of four days of national celebration, beginning on Thursday, to mark Elizabeth’s 70 years on the throne. “This historic Platinum Jubilee is not only a celebration of the monarch but of the qualities she possesses,” Prime Minister Boris Johnson said. “The honours she confers this week reflect many of those qualities that have been invaluable from all different walks of life and to communities across the UK.”

Lewis, who won a Golden Globe for his role in TV drama “Homeland”, was made a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) for services both to drama and to charity for initiating a campaign with his late wife Helen McCrory to raise 1 million pounds to provide food for health service workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Categories CBE Charity Helen Honors Philanthropy Print Media

Damian Lewis Will Be Awarded a CBE

Honored: A Gong for FeedNHS

by Gingersnap | damian-lewis.com | May 28, 2022

Damian is set to receive a gong in the Queen’s Birthday Honours this week for his NHS charity work, and will be honored with Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE). He has quietly carried out philanthropic work for several charities over many years, some of it with Helen. Last year he and Helen helped raise £1.5 million to feed NSH staff during the CoVid-19 pandemic, which allowed 40,000 meals a day to be served to 100 hospitals.

The Sun quoted a friend stating, “This is richly deserved for all the work Damian has done for so many people with so much done with little or no public fanfare.”

The Royal recognition comes after Damian was awarded an OBE by The Duke of Cambridge Prince William at Buckingham Palace in 2014 for contributions to drama. He is an ambassador for a number of organizations, including youth charities Sir HvH Arts Foundation and The Prince’s Trust.

The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire award (MBE, OBE, CBE) is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organizations, and public service outside the Civil Service. The Queen’s Birthday Honours 2022 will be printed in a special Gazette supplement in June 2022.

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Categories Gallery Helen Personal and Family Life

Celebration of Helen McCrory’s Life

Remembering Helen

by Gingersnap | damian-lewis.com | May 20, 2022

According to a tweet by theatre critic Dom Cavendish, Damian hosted a memorial service at St. Paul’s Church, Covent Garden (aka The Actors’ Church) in London on Friday, May 20, 2022, to celebrate Helen McCrory’s life and her formidable personality. There was laughter, tears and a standing ovation in Helen’s honor. Attendees included Helena Bonham Carter, Allie Esiri, Ralph Fiennes, Benedict Cumberbatch, Eddie Redmayne, Natascha McElhone, Bob Geldoff, Rory Kinnear, Mark Strong, Joe Cole, Finn Cole, Matthew Macfadyen and Keeley Hawesdeath. Mark Strong led the tributes as the actor who had worked with Helen more than almost any other actor, appearing in seven different films, shows and plays together. Damian and Helen’s daughter Manon, 15, delivered a touching reading and son Gulliver, 14, played the guitar for guests at the ceremony.

You can see part of the event programme from Mr. Cavendish’s tweet below.  Bob Dylan’s To Be Alone with You was featured and a film titled In Her Own Words played. One cannot help remember that Helen chose To Be Alone with You as one of her favorite tunes during a recent segment of Desert Island Discs and she added that she had a blank check from Damian to run away with Bob Dylan. A close friend who attended the memorial service said, “It was just the most beautiful memorial. It was very touching. Speechless.”

View images of memorial service attendees in our Gallery here.

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Categories Awards Charity Helen Personal and Family Life Philanthropy

Damian Lewis Will Present The McCrory Award in June

The McCrory Award Exhibit

by Gingersnap | damian-lewis.com | March 20, 2022

Photo Cred: Debbi Clark

Debbi Clark, CEO and founder of Sir Hubert von Herkomer Arts Foundation, announced on Instagram Friday, March 18, 2022 that a photography exhibition in honor of former Patron Helen McCrory will be held at the opening of Alon Zakaim Fine Arts’ new gallery space on Cork St. in London on June 15, 2022, with donation proceeds going to HvH Arts Foundation.

The McCrory Award event will feature exclusive prints of Helen McCrory donated by eight photographers, as well as Clark’s own prints. A series of images of artists close to Helen have honored this event to allow Clark to take their portrait as well. In addition to Damian Lewis, Helen’s close friends such as, Jude Law, Benedict Cumberbatch, Sadie Frost, Helena Bonham Carter, Eddie Redmayne, Tom Hiddleston, Fay Ripley and Sienna Miller have agreed to sales of their image with 100% of proceeds donated to The McCrory Award, per Debbi Clark Photography’s Instagram post here.

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Categories Appearances Damian Lewis Events Helen Personal and Family Life Poetry Readings Video

A Poet for Every Day of the Year Live Broadcast

National Theatre Talks

by National Theatre | YouTube | March 3, 2022

Join us to journey through a calendar year in poetry, read by actors on stage at the National Theatre. Allie Esiri and Damian Lewis were joined by friends including Simon Russell Beale, Fay Ripley, Danny Sapani and Lesley Sharp. Chris Riddell live drew the evening. A Poet for Every Day of the Year is dedicated to Helen McCrory, who took part in some of these poetry evenings in previous years.

Signed copies of A Poet for Every Day of the Year are available from the National Theatre Bookshop here. Every purchase supports the work of the National Theatre. This event was performed on the Lyttelton stage, National Theatre, London on Tuesday 25 January 2022.

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Categories Appearances Damian Lewis Events Helen Personal and Family Life Poetry Readings

A Poet for Every Day of the Year Review

Ode to Helen McCrory Cuts to the Heart of the Matter

by Dominic Maxwell | The Times | January 26, 2022

How would Damian Lewis, making his first stage appearance since the death of his wife Helen McCrory last April, begin an occasion dedicated to her memory? With a no-nonsense nod to the mixture of happiness and sadness of being at an occasional poetry reading event that she had taken part in previously herself? With a poem in her honour, performed to a well-scrubbed crowd (including McCrory’s friend Helena Bonham Carter) who had turned out to see him and Sir Simon Russell Beale, Fay Ripley, Danny Sapani and Lesley Sharp reading from the latest anthology of 366 poems edited by the evening’s organiser and host, Allie Esiri.

In the end, no. Lewis found a way to address the elephant in the room that was both unexpected and oddly fitting to such a charming, varied and resonant evening. He told a story about John Dennis, the 18th-century critic and dramatist who, it turned out, had inadvertently invented the expression “steal my thunder”. “One person whose thunder absolutely would not be stolen was Helen McCrory,” Lewis added, in the building where his late wife had successes in Medea and The Deep Blue Sea. “You could try, but it wouldn’t work.”

That done, he started off the evening of 30 poems with Robert Burns’s Address to a Haggis, his Scottish vowels enabled, he said, by a “little tutorial” from his father-in-law the previous night “after a couple of gins”. Not everything that followed had such a memorable accent to propel it, but almost everything here was pithy and impassioned.

Russell Beale gave his all, yet kept his usual sense of ease, to WH Auden’s O Tell Me The Truth About Love. Sharp was as good imitating Dorothy Parker’s cynical drawl for One Perfect Rose as she was joined by Ripley for a twin delivery of Tennyson’s The Charge of The Light Brigade. Although there were a few more greatest hits of poetry like that, more recent and less-known pieces made as much of an impression. Sapani’s reading of Two Guns in the Sky for Daniel Harris made one want to hear more from its author, Raymond Antrobus.

There was a moving finale when footage of McCrory performing at the event, in 2017, was shown as the final poem. It was a tremendous reminder that poetry cuts to the heart of things as much as it dances round their edge.

Read the rest of the original article at The Times