An officer & a gentleman
From Major Dick Winters in Band Of Brothers to Marine Sergeant Nicholas Brody in Homeland, Damian Lewis has made a name for himself in the military. Well, on television at least.
But now he has become an offi cer (of a rather diff erent kind) in his own right. Lewis has been appointed an Offi cer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in Her Majesty’s 2014 Birthday Honours, being celebrated for his services to drama.
Despite his success, a career on stage and screen wasn’t necessarily what was expected of this Old Etonian. ‘I was brought up in that British amateur tradition,’ he stated in an interview with The Telegraph, ‘the one which always held that if you were reasonably good at cricket, knew one or two Latin texts and a few zingy Oscar Wilde quotes for dinner parties, you were pretty much ready to go and run some outpost in Hindustan.’
However, it was the boards rather than the outpost that called to him and following his decision, aged 16, to become an actor, he went on to study at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. With peers including Joseph Fiennes and Jude Law, it was a job to stand out. ‘If you were to ask anyone who was there with me, they’d probably say I was boorishly confident,’ he says. ‘Certainly I always spoke too much when in retrospect I should have just shut up and listened.’
In a way, though, his booming voice and assertive presence paid off , as he won many theatre roles during his 20s, both in the West End and on Broadway.
Although busy on the stage, on-screen success seemed just a pipedream for a time. Speaking to the Sunday Express, he revealed ‘there was a point when I started thinking “Maybe I’ll never be a TV or fi lm actor, maybe I’m too big and too orange and I’ll stay in theatre.”’
However, in a lucky break most actors can only dream of, Steven Spielberg happened to see him in a production of Hamlet. Suitably impressed, the director summoned Lewis to audition for a part in his latest project, the Second World War television miniseries Band Of Brothers.
Up against 150 hopefuls, Lewis never dreamed he had a chance of winning the part, yet he did. Suddenly, this theatre actor was performing in a leading role in the most expensive television series ever made. Costing $125m to make, Band Of Brothers, which was based on real events and followed the fortunes of a company of American soldiers from D-Day to the end of the war, was screened across 26 countries in 2001 and attracted an audience of millions.
This ‘too big and too orange’ actor was instantly the hot new thing, this uniqueness now working in his favour. Once more, speaking to The Telegraph, he said ‘a lot of these American actors have this – in my opinion – misplaced view that they have to look like Action Man. The trouble is, they all run the risk of being interchangeable.’
As Homeland's Marine Sergeant Nicholas BrodyHe may not possess classically proportioned features or colouring (his ginger hair, he says, is never not mentioned), but Lewis is a real leading man. His charismatic presence is largely what led him to be cast in the hugely popular series, political thriller Homeland. His portrayal of Marine Sergeant Nicholas Brody has won him both a Golden Globe and an Emmy, and cemented him as a leading actor both here and in the US. And although he may have mastered a flawless American accent, he remains resolutely British.
Reflecting on his success in the US, he said, ‘I had a feeling that if I committed to being in LA I might have been sucked into big-budget fi lms and found myself there 10 years later, single and unhappy.’
In fact, it was his decision to maintain a presence in the British theatre scene that would lead to the permanent end of those ‘single’ days. In 2004, he appeared at the Almeida Theatre, and in a case of life imitating art, he and co-star Helen McCrory became an item on and off stage. ‘Bit clichéd, isn’t it?’ he mused. ‘But I suppose we knew there was chemistry there.’ They married in 2007 and now live in north London with their two children, Manon and Gulliver.
Damian Lewis is next to be seen as King Henry VIII in the six-part BBC adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s novel, Wolf Hall, to be broadcast next year. The story captures the king in his 30s when he was, in Damian’s own words, ‘lovelorn and svelte’. With his booming voice, dashing looks and (dare we say it) his auburn locks, it seems Damian was made to play the part.
But now he has become an offi cer (of a rather diff erent kind) in his own right. Lewis has been appointed an Offi cer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in Her Majesty’s 2014 Birthday Honours, being celebrated for his services to drama.
Despite his success, a career on stage and screen wasn’t necessarily what was expected of this Old Etonian. ‘I was brought up in that British amateur tradition,’ he stated in an interview with The Telegraph, ‘the one which always held that if you were reasonably good at cricket, knew one or two Latin texts and a few zingy Oscar Wilde quotes for dinner parties, you were pretty much ready to go and run some outpost in Hindustan.’
However, it was the boards rather than the outpost that called to him and following his decision, aged 16, to become an actor, he went on to study at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. With peers including Joseph Fiennes and Jude Law, it was a job to stand out. ‘If you were to ask anyone who was there with me, they’d probably say I was boorishly confident,’ he says. ‘Certainly I always spoke too much when in retrospect I should have just shut up and listened.’
In a way, though, his booming voice and assertive presence paid off , as he won many theatre roles during his 20s, both in the West End and on Broadway.
Although busy on the stage, on-screen success seemed just a pipedream for a time. Speaking to the Sunday Express, he revealed ‘there was a point when I started thinking “Maybe I’ll never be a TV or fi lm actor, maybe I’m too big and too orange and I’ll stay in theatre.”’
However, in a lucky break most actors can only dream of, Steven Spielberg happened to see him in a production of Hamlet. Suitably impressed, the director summoned Lewis to audition for a part in his latest project, the Second World War television miniseries Band Of Brothers.
Up against 150 hopefuls, Lewis never dreamed he had a chance of winning the part, yet he did. Suddenly, this theatre actor was performing in a leading role in the most expensive television series ever made. Costing $125m to make, Band Of Brothers, which was based on real events and followed the fortunes of a company of American soldiers from D-Day to the end of the war, was screened across 26 countries in 2001 and attracted an audience of millions.
This ‘too big and too orange’ actor was instantly the hot new thing, this uniqueness now working in his favour. Once more, speaking to The Telegraph, he said ‘a lot of these American actors have this – in my opinion – misplaced view that they have to look like Action Man. The trouble is, they all run the risk of being interchangeable.’
As Homeland's Marine Sergeant Nicholas BrodyHe may not possess classically proportioned features or colouring (his ginger hair, he says, is never not mentioned), but Lewis is a real leading man. His charismatic presence is largely what led him to be cast in the hugely popular series, political thriller Homeland. His portrayal of Marine Sergeant Nicholas Brody has won him both a Golden Globe and an Emmy, and cemented him as a leading actor both here and in the US. And although he may have mastered a flawless American accent, he remains resolutely British. Reflecting on his success in the US, he said, ‘I had a feeling that if I committed to being in LA I might have been sucked into big-budget fi lms and found myself there 10 years later, single and unhappy.’
In fact, it was his decision to maintain a presence in the British theatre scene that would lead to the permanent end of those ‘single’ days. In 2004, he appeared at the Almeida Theatre, and in a case of life imitating art, he and co-star Helen McCrory became an item on and off stage. ‘Bit clichéd, isn’t it?’ he mused. ‘But I suppose we knew there was chemistry there.’ They married in 2007 and now live in north London with their two children, Manon and Gulliver.
Damian Lewis is next to be seen as King Henry VIII in the six-part BBC adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s novel, Wolf Hall, to be broadcast next year. The story captures the king in his 30s when he was, in Damian’s own words, ‘lovelorn and svelte’. With his booming voice, dashing looks and (dare we say it) his auburn locks, it seems Damian was made to play the part.