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The mud-spattered Lewis, in a World War II paratrooper uniform, has spent the morning shooting blanks (24 for each take) from an M-1 rifle at a crowd of extras dressed as German soldiers.
It is a deafening business, and everyone else on set either wears earplugs or covers their ears whenever director Tom Hanks yells “action!” Continue reading This American Platoon is Led by a Brit, Los Angeles Times, August 20, 2000
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Comments Off on Watch Out for The Young Dudes, Evening Standard, July 8, 2000
Young, gifted and British: the new crop of Brit actors seems to have been cast in the mould marked “Good-Looking — But In An Unconventional Manner”. And there is nothing the film industry likes more than faces that stick in the mind long after they’ve smiled or scowled their way across a screen. Continue reading Watch Out for The Young Dudes, Evening Standard, July 8, 2000
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In rank with Spielberg and Hanks
by Kensal Green, The Evening Standard, May 16, 2000
It’s incredibly easy to spot Damian Lewis as he wanders into the gastro-pub near his flat in Kensal Green. Not only is his hair very ginger – brazen- coloured, really – but he’s wearing a khaki jumper and trousers which make him look, from a distance, like a soldier without the boots.
Most people will know 28-year-old Lewis as a soldier – Lieutenant Neil Loughrey, the morally-compromised British Army officer in the BBC’s acclaimed drama Warriors. This was the kind of TV event which provoked debate (about the UN’s role in Bosnia) well after its broadcast date and thus bestowed instant fame on its actors. In its wake, Lewis was offered a part in the BBC’s current late-twenty-something series Hearts and Bones. He plays Mark, miserably married to Dervla Kirwan (as if that were possible), desperately trying to leave his early-twenties behind, but not making a very good fist of it. I get the feeling that this pub on the Harrow Road is full of Marks. Continue reading In Rank with Spielberg and Hanks, The Evening Standard, May 16, 2000
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by Peter Paterson, Daily Mail, November 22, 1999
OVER the past two nights, we have seen, in Warriors, a deeply moving, alarmingly realistic and powerfully acted drama about a war in Bosnia-Herzegovina that occurred less than a decade ago, yet has been almost wiped from the memory by subsequent Balkan troubles.
Given this collective amnesia and magnificent as it was in many respects – Warriors had no time to explain the witches’ brew of Serb versus Croat, Moslem versus Orthodox, the bitter legacy of World War II, the Tito dictatorship or the collapse of communism. As a consequence, the complexities of who was fighting whom, and why, were barely intelligible to anyone who had not at least seen the shortened, three-hour version of that great documentary The Death of Yugoslavia. Continue reading Warriors: Oh what a lonely war, Daily Mail, November 22, 1999
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by Staff | New Woman | October, 1999
Ioan Gruffudd and Damian Lewis play soldiers in a new BBC drama, so we thought we’d check out their basic training in the love wars.
We love a man in uniform, and they don’t come much better-looking than Ioan Gruffudd, 25, and Damian Lewis, 27. They’re officers in “Warriors”, BBC’s new hard-hitting series about Bosnia. But if they were really in the army, would they lead the charge or get beaten up in the showers?
Right, you ‘orrible men, we’re taking you over the NW emotional assault course to see what you’re made of…
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By Matt Wolf, theater critic and journalist in London, New York Times, July 2, 1995
LONDON— “A HIT, A VERY PALPABLE HIT!” cries the courtier Osric during the climactic duel of “Hamlet.” And in the Broadway production now at the Belasco Theater, those hits are palpable indeed.
Productions of “Hamlet” are often distinguished by verse speaking or physical design. Jonathan Kent’s current staging, imported from the Almeida Theater Company in London, offers an additional virtue in the face-off between Hamlet (played by Ralph Fiennes) and Laertes (Damian Lewis). Beginning on a white rectangular fencing mat, the fight soon spills beyond it, weaving among the chairs of Claudius’s dismayed court as the two combatants become increasingly fevered.
Continue reading Hamlet: Swordplay the Serious Way, New York Times, July 2, 1995
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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
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By Matt Wolf – New York Times – January 1, 1995
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This most excellent canopy the air, look you . . . It makes a difference to when you can see the firmament Hamlet is talking about, and here is one of the gains of watching Hamlet in the Open Air Theatre in Regent’s Park. With the sky above he counts himself king of infinite space; amid the theatre he might be bounded in a nutshell. Continue reading Hamlet in the Park – June 17, 1994
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There are some actors who approach the role of Hamlet via a rigorous apprenticeship in parts that have more than a smack of the Prince of Denmark: Konstantin in The Seagull, say, or Oswald in Ghosts. One such is Simon Russell Beale who is to play Hamlet, at long last, for Sam Mendes. At the opposite extreme are those actors who find themselves pitched in at the deep end early in their careers and prove that they can swim with precocious bravura.
At the Open Air Theatre, Regent’s Park, there is now an egregious example of this latter type in Damian Lewis, who tackles the role in Tim Piggott-Smith’s otherwise patchy production. Lewis has all the stage presence and captivating instincts of a Michael Sheen. Long-limbed, in a black bum-freezer jacket, he reminds you a little of a Dickensian hero.