Tea and Mag Part one

Esquire interview part one.

I Was Quite Shy To Start With, Until I Was About Eight. Then I Was Really Not Very Shy At All'

There's no great secret to Damian Lewis' success. Confident, charismatic, charming, the British star of the compulsive spy thriller Homeland would be insufferable if only he weren't such good fun.

Damian Lewis strides into the Esquire photo shoot fizzing with confidence. "Sorry I'm late," he announces. "I've been bombing down the M4." He has come from the Hay Festival, where he and his wife, the actress Helen McCrory, read aloud selections from the Romantic poets: Byron, Keats and Shelley. "We slept in a proper gypsy caravan, futon on the floor," he enthuses. "Great way to do it."

Tall and athletically built, the person The Sunday Times once described as "the upmarket ginger actor" is a big man and his presence is overwhelming. He flirts with the studio staff. He commandeers the stereo. He inspects the clothes the fashion team have brought along for him to wear. "Ah! We're doing ties, are we?"

Someone puts on Daft Punk's "Get Lucky" and he sings along with his own words:

"I'm up all night to get stoned ... I'm up all night to get trashed ... I'm up all night to get laid ..."

"My six-year-old loves that," he explains. "It's Nile Rodgers, so you can't fault it. But, 'I'm up all night to get lucky'? That is barely disguised pornography."

This is how Damian Lewis is -- sure-footed. By all accounts, it's how he always has been. He spent his childhood in St. John's Wood with his wealthy insurance broker dad, and mum, who served on the boards of the Royal Court and Almeida Theatres. He was famously educated at Eton before heading off to The Guildhall School of Music and Drama. On leaving the latter, he has admitted, "I was sure I was going to be a sensation."

"Damian was a bit of a golden boy at school," his brother Gareth has said. "He never had that struggle."

Aged 10, he was interviewing himself in his bedroom mirror: "I thought, 'This'll be good on Wogan'." At 23, he was playing Hamlet in Regent's Park Open Air Theatre. By 30, he was over in the US being directed by Steven Spielberg.

 In the last 12 months, he has added a Golden Globe to his existing Emmy, been awarded the Freedom of the City of London and dined with President Obama at the White House, who declared Lewis' hit show Homeland, in which he plays a former prisoner of war "turned" by al-Qaeda, his favourite. (Lewis presented the Leader of the Free World with a signed box set.

 As if this weren't perhaps precocious enough, in a move that tells you much about Lewis' attitude to life -- "work hard, be fearless, but never forget to have fun, basically" -- on the spur of the moment he decided to crown it with a joke. "From one Muslim to another," he wrote.

All of this serves to suggest Damian Lewis is rather overbearing or too cocky by half or somehow unlikeable, then that would be a mistake. Self-confidence is an asset, overconfidence is a weakness and Lewis is all about the assets. You get the sense he could walk into any room, any set, and make it his own.