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 don't believe Jesus was the son of God, although I'm inclined to think he might have been a great prophet.
It's certainly true that I was brought up in that British amateur tradition, the one which always held that if you were reasonably good at cricket, knew one or two Latin texts and a few zingy Oscar Wilde quotes for dinner parties, you were pretty much ready to go and run some outpost in Hindustan.
A cricket ball broke my nose when I was a kid so I couldn't breath through it. Before I had it operated on I used to stand on stage with my mouth slightly open.
I think people like to be scared. I think people like tension and suspense in a movie.
You know what it's like to feel anxious - it's horrible feeling anxious. It's stressful having that feeling, having butterflies in your stomach, even for a day, and you don't sleep at night.
You just have to take control of your own performance.
Of course the lower classes have always felt downtrodden and aspired to a better life. But there is this theory that people respond to a class structure in England - there was a time when people knew who they were and knew whom they served and as long as management wasn't abusive, it was a good life for people.
I've done classical theaters. I played Hamlet myself and Romeo.
I was, if you like, a successful schoolboy in that I had a degree of talent in all the required things that make you a success at school.
I love playing sport.
I love going for a swim. Growing up in England, anywhere with a pool seems like the height of glamour to me.
I guess I'm just good at playing repressed individuals. I'm lucky because those are often the roles that catch people's eyes.
I don't mean this grandly, but it was never my intention to live in L.A. and do a big network show.
Dramatically it's always more interesting to conceal rather than reveal things.