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've discovered just how symbiotic the relationship is between writers, directors and actors. They ask the same questions and strip down texts in exactly the same way.
I'm not an American, but I have this weird connection to America in different ways through my dad living here for five years, my godfather being an American who I'm very close to.
You can't be sent away to prison for life and feel OK about it.
Quiet people, people who aren't given to emotional outbursts, people who are economic with words - they're 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.
Producing is a world of compromise and actors are utterly spoiled all the time.
What I do believe in is the moral code of Christianity.
You have to go where the good writing is.
In the end, there's something of the puritan work ethic about me that roles really must sustain me on an intellectual level.
It's an unfair comparison because when things are developed in the UK, they're developed at script stage only.
I've always had a 'Work hard, play hard' attitude to life - I still do - but sometimes you get involved in something that needs a calm, methodical approach.
It was pretty daunting. Normally, I never go to a gym, but before we started shooting, I thought I'd better. I reckoned I was in really good shape, and then I looked around and I was half the size of everyone else. A lot of these American actors have this - in my view - misplaced view that they have to look like Action Man. The trouble is, they all run the risk of being interchangeable.
I always resented Tom [Hardy] for turning up on Band Of Brothers and getting the girl — in fact, the only girl in a cast of hundreds of smelly men! I, on the other hand, spent eight months with my face squashed up against someone else’s backside in one sodden trench after another. And it looks as if Tom might have got the girl again [in Colditz], damn his eyes.
The best shows succeed because they tap into a national conversation,
Temperamentally I'm not a natural producer, because I don't have the patience.