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Damian Lewis: my depression after motorbike crash

Damian Lewis says his experience of depression as a result of a motorbike accident informed his performance as Henry VIII in Wolf Hall

Damian Lewis has described how a brain injury sustained in a motorbike accident left him suffering from depression, a condition that has proved unlikely inspiration for his latest screen role as Henry VIII.

Lewis stars as the monarch in the BBC’s forthcoming drama Wolf Hall, based on Hilary Mantel’s Tudor novels.

The actor is intrigued by the theory that Henry VIII became increasingly tyrannical as a result of concussion suffered when he fell from his horse during a jousting tournament.

The insight comes from Lewis’s own experiences in a road accident when he was in his late 20s. He has seldom spoken of the crash or the trauma that followed. He made a full recovery, but in a new interview the 43-year-old gave a vivid description of his symptoms.

“I’ve suffered from concussion myself from a motorbike crash,” he said. “I spent three months afterwards getting into needless fights and suffering from bouts of depression, unable to watch TV or read because of migraines.

“I would often not get dressed and just do puzzles in my flat. So I think it’s absolutely plausible that it had an effect on Henry’s character.”

The accident occurred in 1998, when Lewis was appearing in a Royal Shakespeare Company production of Much Ado About Nothing in London.

Returning home on his motorbike after a performance, he was struck by a taxi that pulled out in front of him near Pentonville Prison in north London. He hit the windshield with such force that it shattered, and he was unconscious for several minutes.

Three weeks after the accident, Lewis believed he was well enough to return to work. But mid-way through a soliloquy during his first night back on stage, he sank to the floor.

“I gave the rest of my speech from there. If I hadn’t sat down, I would have keeled over. I probably wasn’t ready to go back.”

Lewis described his symptoms in an interview for the Mail on Sunday's Event magazine. In a 2003 interview, he recalled: “I know what it’s like to come round in the middle of a road in the middle of the night, with rain just dripping on your and the blur and sounds of a ring of faces peering down at you.”

The Homeland star mentioned the accident during a 2013 guest appearance on the BBC’s Top Gear, but made light of it. Lewis raised a laugh from the audience when he recalled that he was tended by a nurse who had been travelling in the back of the taxi after a night out, and who later admitted: “I couldn’t tell if you were actually dying or if I was just so p----- I couldn’t find your pulse.”

Lewis believes Henry VIII underwent a similar but more severe personality change as a result of his accident. In January 1536, the year that Anne Boleyn was sent to the Tower, Henry fell from his horse during a jousting tournament and the heavily-armoured horse fell on top of him. He was said to be out cold for two hours.

Lucy Worsley, the television presenter and historian, has claimed that the resulting brain injury transformed Henry “from sporty, promising, generous young prince to cruel, paranoid and vicious tyrant. From that date the turnover of the wives really speeds up, and people begin to talk about him in quite a new and negative way.”

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