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 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.
I'd lived in LA for two years and I said to my agent that I wouldn't do any more network TV, because my family and I had just made the decision to live in England. It would be a whole year in LA shooting network TV.
Acting can be a narrow and isolated experience, because you only examine your particular part.
You know, this idea of going around the world imposing democracy by growing a middle-class, a trading merchant class that is independent of your faith, is a good notion, but we're all partially different - it's no good imposing systems on people that it doesn't suit.
My heroes were all in the theatre.
You never know when you're taking a job, ever... but you try to take good scripts. That's all you can do as an actor - take the best thing available. Even then, it's not [really] in your control. Certainly not in film and TV, because there are so many other elements. You just have to take control of your own performance.
People need revelation, and then they need resolution.
For me the rehearsal period is the part I most enjoy. It's the creating of the story.
We are not telling Tudor history; we are creating ' Wolf Hall ' from novels, which are already a rereading of Tudor history.
When I'm working in America, I wake up with an American accent and stay with it all day till makeup comes off. I just want everyone to be at ease, and not have the show's creators think, 'Oh my god, he's so English, why did we hire him?'
There's something important, as an actor, about allowing yourself to be approached by people to do roles. People see different things in you.
I'm no more or less antisocial than the next person.