Damian Lewis
Actor, Dad, Redhead, and Ping Pong Champion
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 Baker

Move over Coen Brothers for the new kids on the set, Western Mail, May 6, 2006

Move over Coen Brothers for the new kids on the set

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.

The film clapper board reads Roll 46, Slate 74, Take 1 and the rest of the 40-strong crew are getting ready for a scene rehearsal.

The Welsh actor’s key role in this scene is to crawl through the painted silver boxes and make it look as if he is scrabbling through the vents of a ceiling shaft.

And, he has to do all of this while holding a gun, a motive in his mind and a sense of ennui about his current situation in life. Impossible? That’s acting for you, darling. Continue reading Move over Coen Brothers for the new kids on the set, Western Mail, May 6, 2006

Categories Media Print Media The Baker

Band of Brothers 2: This time it’s personal, The Times, April 20, 2006

Band of brothers 2: this time it’s personal

by Kevin Maher, The Times, April 20, 2006

Kevin Maher discovers why Damian Lewis got on really well with the director of his new film

Damian Lewis  is jumping out of his skin. On the Cardiff set of the high concept dramedy The Baker, the 35-year-old great white hope of British screen acting has just been prematurely peppered by a troika of explosive squibs that have shredded the back of his black leather armchair and sent him to the floor of a slickly designed loft apartment.

“Er, think the timing was a bit off there,” whispers one of the concerned grips while Lewis, who famously starred in the Spielberg-produced TV series Band of Brothers, is dusted down and readied for another heart-stopping take.

Continue reading Band of Brothers 2: This time it’s personal, The Times, April 20, 2006

Categories Media Personal and Family Life Pillars of the Community Print Media

Damian Lewis: Q&A, The Guardian – October 28, 2005

Damian Lewis: Q&A

by Rosanna Greenstreet | The Guardian | October 28, 2005

Damian Lewis was born in London in 1971. He was nominated for a Golden Globe for his role in the second world war drama Band Of Brothers. He plays Benedict in Much Ado About Nothing, part of the BBC’s Shakespeare season, and next month stars in Ibsen’s Pillars Of The Community at the National Theatre. He lives in London and Wales.

Here is his Q&A:

What is your idea of perfect happiness?

Autumn, long walk, fire, bottle of red.

What is your greatest fear?

Death.

Which living person do you most admire?

Roger Federer – unearthly talent combined with killer instinct.

What has been your most embarrassing moment?

Not appropriate to mention here. I was 15 and had only one thing on my mind …

What makes you depressed?

Terrorism.

What is your favourite smell?

Welsh air.

Continue reading Damian Lewis: Q&A, The Guardian – October 28, 2005

Categories Colditz Media Personal and Family Life Print Media

Damian Lewis: ‘British women are weird’, Sunday Mirror, March 27, 2005

DAMIAN LEWIS: `British women are weird’ Actor and red-hot redhead Damian Lewis, 34, talks about his kinky fans, pinching girls’ bums, and why he’s a born liar.

by Louise Burke, Sunday Mirror, March 27, 2005

You star in new ITV drama From Colditz With Love, as a prisoner of war who joins the Secret Service. Are you a gadget man?

Damien Lewis: I like my sports car. I just got a little Mazda MX5 – it’s only a cheap and cheerful one really. It’s titanium, a sort of greyish colour. I’m not exactly obsessed by toys. I don’t have a plasma TV, just a normal one, though I suppose it’s still quite big. I do have an i-Pod, although I need to learn how to download my music. You can pay people to do that can’t you? I heard you can pay someone pounds 200 and they’ll download you 5,000 songs. I think I’ll do that, because to be honest, I’m a bit clueless.

Is it true you were asked to audition for the new Bond movie?

DL: That isn’t strictly true. I have never auditioned for the role of James Bond. It would be difficult not to consider it – helicopter rides to sunny locations and let’s not forget the Bond girls. Halle Berry was pretty good in that bikini, but my favourite was Grace Jones.

Continue reading Damian Lewis: ‘British women are weird’, Sunday Mirror, March 27, 2005