Major Dick Winters – Page 2

Damian Lewis Interview for The Misanthrope, The Telegraph, November 24, 2009

On November 24, 2009October 9, 2017 By Damianista Comments Off

Damian Lewis Interview for The Misanthrope

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.

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Move Over Coen Brothers For the New Kids on the Set

On May 6, 2006September 2, 2023 By Damianista Comments Off

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

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Let’s Dance – Fall 2005

On October 1, 2005August 2, 2020 By Damianista Comments Off

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

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Damian Lewis Interview, Sunday Express, May 25, 2003

On May 25, 2003October 8, 2017 By Damianista Comments Off

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

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PBS Masterpiece Interview with Damian Lewis, May 2003

On May 8, 2003August 2, 2020 By Gingersnap Comments Off

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

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Interview: The Charmer, The Times / Sunday Times, November 17, 2002

On November 17, 2002October 8, 2017 By Damianista Comments Off

The Charmer

by Lesley White, The Times / Sunday Times, November 17, 2002

Smooth, confident and raring to reinvent himself, Damian Lewis is just the chap to play Jeffrey Archer, says Lesley White

When we meet on the Pinewood set of the slapstick satire, written by Guy Jenkin, creator of Drop the Dead Donkey, Lewis’s flaming red hair is dyed brown, the make-up department has achieved a not totally streak-free job with the fake tan, and, with his funky shorts, he is transformed not into Jeffrey, but a cross between an Ibiza raver and a boy scout. As Greta Scacchi is playing Margaret Thatcher, we can assume no attempt at impersonation is being made.

In some ways, Lewis, 31, and the celebrated fantasist have more in common than it might first appear. While the latter has spent his adult life embellishing his biography for public consumption, the actor went through a period of reverse self-invention. Rather than admit having attended Eton, for example, he told early interviewers that he went to boarding school, then changed the subject before they could ask which one. “I tried to sever all ties to my posh upbringing. It made me feel as if I couldn’t be a genuine moody actor. I’m desensitised to that now.”
Continue reading Interview: The Charmer, The Times / Sunday Times, November 17, 2002

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Guardian Interview: Shooting Star – March 10, 2002

On March 10, 2002January 25, 2020 By Damianista Comments Off

Shooting star

by Jay Rayner | The Guardian | March 10, 2002

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

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Damian Lewis Interview: USA Weekend Magazine – March 10 2002

On March 10, 2002August 2, 2020 By Gingersnap Comments Off

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

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Damian Lewis Interview, Sunday Telegraph – Sept 30, 2001

On September 30, 2001January 25, 2020 By Damianista Comments Off

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

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This American Platoon is Led by a Brit, Los Angeles Times, August 20, 2000

On August 20, 2000October 8, 2017 By Damianista Comments Off

Damian Lewis survived a slew of tests to win the role of a war hero.

by DAVID GRITTEN, Los Angeles Times, August 20, 2000

HATFIELD, England — “I’ve really screwed up my hearing,” grimaces Damian Lewis. “I should have had earplugs in.”

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