Damian Lewis
Actor, Dad, Redhead, and Ping Pong Champion
Categories Audio Billions Broadcast Media Guest Appearances Interviews Ping-Pong Podcast Video

Video Interview & Podcast: Damian’s Guest Appearance on Sunday TODAY with Willie Geist – April 22, 2018

Sunday Sit-Down and Podcast with Willie Geist

by Gingersnap | damian-lewis.com | April 22, 2018

Source: NBC Today Show

On Sunday, April 22, 2018, Damian appeared on NBC’s Sunday TODAY with Willie Geist at New York City’s Spin to discuss insider tips about what’s to come on the upcoming season of Billions, Damian’s breakout role in Band of Brothers, his American and British accents, and he even showed off his crazy ping-pong skills in this video. For additional interview video snippets and extras, view our original announcement.

Watch the interview video and listen to the full-length podcast below, and don’t forget to visit our Gallery for the latest photos.

Podcast:

Damian says of Billions and playing Bobby Axelrod, “This season we descend even further through the circles of hell. And as each personable, individual soul blackens and darkens because of the corrupting influence of power and money, we see the stakes just rise higher and higher. It’s really good fun. You know, this is a show about assholes being assholes. That’s why he’s [Axe] fun to play. He’s a predator, he prowls, he’s looking for prey – that’s a good metaphor for hedge fund guys who are looking for the injured wildebeest off the back of the pack that’s under performing. He’s got a swagger about him. He’s an alley cat. He’s a scrapper, he’s that boxer who lives on his wits and who’s wits are just a little bit quicker than everybody else’s so he can roll and he’s got quick feet.”

Over the last two years, Willie has sat down with some of the biggest names in news and pop culture — from actors and musicians to presidents and CEOs — to talk about the stories behind their success. Starting now, these entire conversations will be available every week on the “Sunday Sitdown” podcast.

Categories Billions Interviews Magazine Print Media

If Damian Had Billions, He’d Spend it on Immunotherapy- March 16, 2018

Parade Interview: From Coloring Books, Private Jets and a House in the South of France to Immunotherapy and Billions

by Walter Scott | Parade | March 16, 2018

What are Axe and Chuck fighting about?

There’s a clear moral vision, which is a libertarian one represented by Axe, who believes in the free market; and the moral position by Chuck that no one should be able to amass that much wealth, that [wealth like that] in itself is an immoral act. They both happen to be the best at what they do, and [being] king of the castle is important to both.

If you had that kind of money, how would you spend it?

Immunotherapy trials. A lot of it would go to charity, but I’d definitely have a private jet to avoid [the hassles] at the airports, and a house in the South of France.

Have you made red hair cool?

Red hair was always cool! In Britain, some redheads get teased as youngsters. I avoided it, mostly. I was lucky because I played sports. I’m going to recommend a coloring book called Colour Me Good Ginger. It’s filled with all your famous redheads, and I’m on the cover. Buy this book, and then go and buy an orange felt tip. You only need one color, orange, and then you paint us all in orange. It’s Ed Sheeran, Julianne Moore and Prince Harry, we’re all in there.

Continue reading If Damian Had Billions, He’d Spend it on Immunotherapy- March 16, 2018

Categories Homeland Media Print Media The Forsyte Saga

Emmys Watch: Damian Lewis on ‘Homeland’ and ‘The Forsyte Saga’, New York Times, September 21, 2012

Emmys Watch: Damian Lewis on ‘Homeland’ and ‘The Forsyte Saga’

Photo

Damian Lewis in a scene from “Homeland.”
Damian Lewis in a scene from “Homeland.”Credit Kent Smith/Showtime

On Sunday night at the Emmy Awards, Showtime’s geopolitical thriller “Homeland,” which returns for its second season on Sept. 30, will vie to end the four-year reign of “Mad Men” as television’s top drama. Damian Lewis, who stars as the P.O.W.-turned-plotter-turned-politician Nicholas Brody, was also nominated for best actor in a drama.

Continue reading Emmys Watch: Damian Lewis on ‘Homeland’ and ‘The Forsyte Saga’, New York Times, September 21, 2012

Categories Media Personal and Family Life Print Media

Time and Place: Damian Lewis – Oct 30, 2011

From Camden Town and Manchester to Manhattan and Canada 

by Caroline Rees | Sunday Times | October 30, 2011

Camden was happening – and soon my career was, too. I never anticipated living in Camden Town. As an 18-year-old, I’d gone to the Crush nights at the Electric Ballroom, so I thought this part of north London was a place for students and people wearing tie-dye T-shirts. But I found a fantastic little house with a roof terrace in a gorgeous, very urban row of workmen’s cottages on Prowse Place, a cobbled mews tucked away between Camden and Kentish Town. I bought No 7 in 2001 and lived there for five years. I had Baz Bamigboye on one corner and Amy Winehouse on another. Continue reading Time and Place: Damian Lewis – Oct 30, 2011

Categories Media Print Media Stolen

Damian Lewis: Back in Britain and Starring in Stolen – June 29, 2011

Damian Lewis: Back in Britain and starring in Stolen

The actor has no regrets about leaving Tinseltown for the mean streets of Manchester — and a spot of fishing.

Damian Lewis, the most famous screen redhead since Shirley Temple
Damian Lewis, the most famous screen redhead since Shirley Temple, BBC 

It’s given that most actors don’t have two ha’pennies to rub together. The London-born actor Damian Lewis seems keen to show he’s not one of them – during the interview he holds two pounds coins, clicking them together to punctuate points he is making. It might be a nervous affectation or a show of ostentation. Given the shiny blue suit and polished brogues that he is wearing at BBC TV Centre, it might well be the latter. This is after all, the actor who was thrust into the spotlight in the epic Spielberg- produced mini-series Band of Brothers in 2001, became an overnight sensation, the most famous screen redhead since Shirley Temple, and was whisked off to Hollywood in the wake of that show. But Hollywood didn’t quite work out, and after some dud films and a cancelled TV series, he is back in Britain, his latest role in a BBC TV film Stolen, an earnest, quietly moving film about child trafficking.

Continue reading Damian Lewis: Back in Britain and Starring in Stolen – June 29, 2011

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 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