Damian Lewis
Damian Lewis
Damian Watcyn Lewis, OBEis an English actor and producer. He is known for portraying U.S. Marine Sergeant Nicholas Brody in the Showtime series Homeland, hedge fund manager Bobby "Axe" Axelrod in another Showtime series Billions, Soames Forsyte in the ITV remake of The Forsyte Saga, Detective Charlie Crews in the NBC drama Life, and U.S. Army Major Richard Winters in the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers. He appeared as Henry VIII in Wolf Hall, which earned him his third Primetime...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionTV Actor
Date of Birth11 February 1971
CityLondon, England
I think you can't be really posh and be an interesting actor. I'm a bit of a posh rough.
Theres something important, as an actor, about allowing yourself to be approached by people to do roles. People see different things in you.
My parents were incredibly inclusive.
I want to make a clear distinction between people who take acting seriously and people who call themselves actors because theyve been on reality TV or something.
There are ways of avoiding becoming tabloid fodder and therefore giving people license to pry into your private life. And theres a distinction between being an actor and being a celebrity. You may become a celebrity through acting, but you dont need to do so.
No Western government has ever played the long-term in terms of foreign policy.
Quiet people, people who arent given to emotional outbursts, people who are economic with words - theyre also fun to play, but you find yourself needing a laser precision in those roles. Otherwise you just sort of stand around, looking slightly brain-dead. You worry about being uninteresting.
You know, I think I am faintly spiritual.
I have a three-year-old and a four-year-old at home, and my mornings are about just dealing with the fact of that. I oddly enjoy it.
I've had loss in my life, and I like to think my mother's energy lives on in some faintly Buddhist way. I do find some comfort there.
It's good to be busy on a film set because there is a lot of sitting around, so if you've got two roles to play at one time, then that's great to do.
You can't do something that is morally vacuous or dysfunctional and then write it off saying, 'It wasn't my film, I was just doing a job in it.'
Seeing a man praying to Allah is enough for some people to assume he is a terrorist.
In England we burnt redheads at the stake, because we thought they were witches. There are still young redheads in Britain getting ripped for having red hair. 'Oy, Ginger!'