Damian Lewis attends the 60th Evening Standard Theatre Awards

Damian Lewis attends the 60th Evening Standard Theatre Awards this evening with his wife Helen McCrory who has been nominated for Best Actress award with her performance in Medea.

source: Daily Mail 

source: @jess_barrett twitter

source: standard.co.uk

Damian Lewis is Kirsty Young's Castaway on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs

source: BBC Radio 4

Damian Lewis was Kirsty Young's Castaway on BBC Radio 4 Desert Island Discs (DID) this morning. 

You can listen to the interview here and download it to listen on the go, too! 

Damian's favorite music choice for DID was Elvis Presley's Bossa Nova Baby :) 

We also have an article for you from Wales Online talking about the radio interview. 

ENJOY!

Homeland star Damian Lewis fluffing his lines - surely not?

Don’t worry Brody-fans, the talented actor hasn’t lost the plot, he was just recalling a school play incident on this week’s episode of Desert Island Discs.

source: BBC 4 Radio

Appearing on the popular Radio 4’ show, he told host Kirsty Young that being on stage felt “instinctive”, but admitted it had not always been the case and aged 11 he had forgotten the whole third act of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Princess Ida. 

Lewis, whose paternal grandparents are Welsh, said: “It’s like an actor’s nightmare that actors have before they’re getting ready for press night but it happened to me in real life. I stood on a stage in front of the entire school with Mrs Woodgates playing the piano from the side and singing at least one song for me and saying quite a lot of my dialogue as well.

“I was stood there mouthing it on the stage like I might just fool them if I just keep moving my lips. The headmaster said it was the worst dress rehearsal in his history of being at the school”.

The actor, who was recently made an OBE, is set to play King Henry VIII in the BBC adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s Tudor-era novels. He has guest presented Have I Got News For You six times and  recently appeared in feature film The Silent Storm.

He also revealed a childhood love of Elvis Presley and revealed he would use shaving foam to achieve the perfect quiff.

Eton-educated Lewis made his name playing Major Richard Winters in the Second World War epic Band Of Brothers, before cementing his star status in the role of returned prisoner of war Marine Sergeant Nicholas Brody in Homeland.

The star, who is married to fellow actor Helen McCrory, of Peaky Blinders fame, that the pair have a policy of politely rejecting fan requests when out and about, saying: “It can be hard to stop and give someone a photo, but if I’m with the family I tend to just blanketly say no photos today, I’m out with the family.

“It’s good for the children, I think, not to see their parents as endlessly being photographed by strangers. It’s a slightly warped view of the world.”

The red-head told Young he would need “some Aloe vera oil-based lotion” to protect his pale skin from the Desert Island sun, but chose to take a whittling kit as his luxury item.

Among his chosen tracks were Crystal Clear by electronic dance act The Grid, Baggy Trousers by Madness and Bix Beiderbecke’s Goose Pimples.

Henry VIII Makes the Front Page of Sunday Times today!

source: twitter

We share with you below excerpts from the Sunday Times interview, and you can see the entire article here. 

Lewis, whose great-grandfather Lord Dawson of Penn was a physician to the royal family, will play Henry VIII in a six-part BBC television adaptation of Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel’s Man Booker prizewinning historical novel.

“It feels like a canny piece of casting because I do feel and find similarities to myself,” said Lewis.

“I think there is no question that it helps having had the kind of schooling I’ve had to play a king. It’s not such a leap oddly — even though the thought of being a monarch of any nation is mind-boggling and not something I could imagine easily at all.

“But, yes, there’s just the sort of court structure, hierarchies and the way they are set up which is something I understand.”

Eton does seem to make natural rulers, having produced no fewer than 19 British prime ministers, including David Cameron.

Lewis’s comments, however, mark something of a turnaround for the actor who two years ago admitted in a radio interview that he used to keep his Eton background secret for fear of being typecast “as a floppy-fringed public school boy”.

He has become better known for playing Americans such as Sergeant Nicholas Brody in the Homeland series and Major Richard Winters in Band of Brothers.

Wolf Hall marks the actor’s meatiest role yet in a British television production. The series, which is due to be screened in January, combines two of Mantel’s books, Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, which chart the rise to power of Thomas Cromwell in the court of Henry VIII.

source: Sunday Times

The books have sold in their millions, particularly in Britain and America, and have also been adapted separately for the stage by the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), first at Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, and then in London’s West End.

...

The BBC series is a co- production between Company Pictures and the American-owned Playground and has more of a political slant than the stage adaptation.

...

Lewis expands on his Eton education on today’s Desert Island Discs. “It had a high octane and privileged environment.” he tells the host Kirsty Young.

“It was also massively competitive and fed the idea that you had better not be the one who is caught out. You had to be quick, nimble and agile all the time.”

source: Damian-Lewis.com

The actor also talks about his role in Wolf Hall, explaining that Henry had an average- sized 34in waist until his mid-thirties. Lewis has to be padded up to play the king in his forties, however, after the monarch put on weight following a jousting accident that prevented him from being able to exercise so much.

Lewis says rather modestly that he is now not as well known as his actress wife, Helen McCrory, who has recently been in the BBC2 drama series Peaky Blinders and on stage as Medea.

“We signed autographs [in October] at the Cheltenham Literature Festival. I could have been her assistant. I don’t think most knew who I was,” he tells the Radio 4 programme.

McCrory, 46, gets to dress up as a monarch herself in the new year when she plays Elizabeth I — Henry’s daughter — in Bill, a comedy film about the young Shakespeare that was made by members of the team behind the Horrible Histories series.

Lewis tells Desert Island Discs: “I fully expect one day to end up acting as a butler to her dame."

Damian Lewis on BBC Radio 4 this Sunday!! don t miss

Damian Lewis will be interviewed on Sunday 30 November on BBC Radio 4

Damian Lewis

Desert Island Discs

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the actor, Damian Lewis.

As part of the wave of British talent that's crashed onto America's shores in recent years his impact has made a deep impression on the creative landscape. His role as Sergeant Brodie in Homeland saw him win both an Emmy and Golden Globe and along with Band of Brothers, The Forsyte Saga and a long list of other credits, he now ranks as one of our most well recognised and highly regarded performers.

Things didn't always look so peachy: aged 11, and in the school production of Princess Ida, he forgot the entire third act and stood mute in front of a packed auditorium. Tellingly, rather than scuttling into the wings with shame he soldiered on and by 16 he knew performing was, more than anything, what he wanted to do.

He says, "I am a person who is ambitious. I'm ambitious to get the very best from every moment and even if that's just taking my children to the zoo ... I want it to be the best it can be.".

This programme will be available shortly after broadcast

see website here: