Damian's Dominion: The Damian Lewis Digest

THE DAMIAN DIGEST
A Library Of Excerpts From Articles About Damian Lewis

PARKINSON, 3/1/03:

"Yeah, I did a bit of busking. That takes me back! I had a motorbike. Basically, I saw 'Easy Rider' and I thought I was Dennis Hopper or Peter Fonda, I didn't care which. I had a big Harley-style motorbike and I went down to the South of France on two consecutive summers with my guitar and my tent on the back and played 'Sooperrrtromp,' as the French say. 'Can you play Sooperrrtromp?' And I was trying to do Bob Dylan numbers."

ROMANTICMOVIES.COM, 3/03:

Did you ever confuse yourself with which accent/voice to use in a scene [in Dreamcatcher]? "Yeah, I had a dialect coach who was helping me with my American accent, and actually at the end, he had to help me with my English accent because I couldn't get back to a decent English accent after speaking in an American one for so long (laughing)."
Quote from Lawrence Kasdan: "Damian Lewis is an extraordinary young British actor. He's very magnetic, charismatic and soulful. I was just wildly taken with him, and could see that he played an American very easily; I was just knocked out by his abilities."

DREAMCATCHERMOVIE.WARNERBROS.COM, SPRING 2003:

"Damian Lewis, whom I first saw in 'Band of Brothers,' is an extraordinary young British actor," says [Lawrence] Kasdan. "He's very magnetic, charismatic and soulful. I was just wildly taken with him, and could see that he played an American very easily; I was just knocked out by his abilities."

BBC, 4/8/03:

Alana Lee: This is your first Hollywood movie. What was it about "Dreamcatcher" that appealed to you?
Damian Lewis: In all honesty, if Lawrence Kasdan [the director] rings you up and then hands you a script that's been adapted by him and William Goldman and says, "I'd like you to come and play one of the lead roles in my movie", it's quite an easy choice. He's a hero of mine and I've grown up watching his movies. He's made some of my favorite movies: "The Big Chill", "The Accidental Tourist", "Body Heat".

ES MAGAZINE, 4/11/03

Empty bottles of Evian water and a bottle of Visine eyedrops are drewn across the table. Someone had a big party last night. "Oh, it was some fashion party, and it was fun but look at me ..." He eyes himself in the mirror. "I look like an old lizard."
"I never tried to pretend that I was from Leyton, but when you're starting out in acting it registers very strongly with people if you say you went to Eton. I didn't want to be cast only in Noel Coward -- I wanted to do something a bit edgier." Actually he's done a lot of classical theatre. "But everything I've done is quirky and hip. Oh, and I suppose I went through a period when I thought posh actors couldn't be interesting actors. And I wore a lot of black until a friend of mine said he thought it was making me sexually aggressive." He also developed a thing for cloth caps ("Still love 'em." ) and a habit of "going to the Electric Ballroom in Camden on Friday nights and jumping up and down to AC/DC."
[During the interview (with a female interviewer)] He suddenly decides that he's "dying for a pee." The door is left ajar. He whistles. I blush.
"The car crashes in the film [Dreamcatcher] didn't remind me of Mum's car crash, but I've just been to India and the driving or being driven there did remind me of Mum's car crash. Repeatedly."
The family remains close. Gareth is a scriptwriter and director and Damian plans to executive produce and star in his brother's debut feature, Shakespeare's Cake, later this year.
He's certainly got tremendous elegance and total self-assurance while managing to be unexpectedly butch. He does, after all, ride a big old motorbike -- a Honda VFR 750, which I'm told is nicely macho.
I wonder, if he were to be offered a fashion campaign, might he be tempted? "I think maybe I'm just tarty enough to say yes." It turns out he's become sort of ambassador for Jasper Conran with whom he's great friends. They considered asking him to do the show at London Fashion Week. "I would have been terrified. I mean I went to the show and the catwalk was about 60m long and the bank of photographers that you walk towards is quite staggering and I sat down and there were suddenly 15 photographers click, click, clicking at me. I'm not being falsely modest, but it's not like I'm George Clooney ... Yet."

BAFTA TELEVISION AWARDS PROGRAMME, 4/13/03:

"I had a rather precocious sense of not wanting to follow the beaten path -- Eton, Oxbridge, a career in the world of finance or whatever. I knew pretty early on that I wanted to act and fortunately I had parents who supported me in that dream. I always remember that my dad said, 'It's important to do the thing that you're best at or your life will always be a disappointment to you.' I think that was very sound advice."
"I do put an awful lot into the job," Lewis admits, "possibly a throw back to my upbringing which was underpinned by a real middle class work ethic. There was a philosophy at home of always being 'useful,' so when I work, I feel guilty if I take the easy route. I fully expect and want to work hard."
"You grow up and sit in a cinema and watch Raiders of the Lost Ark or Lawrence of Arabia. You see these big epics unfolding and it's fantasy time. Then, if you can actually be able to be part of that, that's really exciting. I'd be lying to you if I said I didn't have ambitions to be a big screen actor. Who in this business doesn't?"
"Along with every other young British actor or director I know, I'd far prefer to be doing it here than in America. I'd love to be part of a resurgent British film industry, but, for the moment, we don't have the money to make the films with the kind of visual scope that interests me. It's a pity, but it's true."
"In big films, responsibility tends to be wrested from actors. Once you're in a big concept movie, it's the thrill of the story that counts. As an actor, you can get away with being mediocre and the movie can still be fun and exciting. If you're playing Soames in The Forsyte Saga and you're not good or interesting to watch then, arguably, the whole series could fall on its face. So, actually, TV is far more actor-led than film."
"In many ways for me, it [Warriors] was the biggest project because it was the first time I'd done any sort of serious drama on TV, the first time I'd really proved to myself that I could act in front of the camera. It gave me the confidence to believe in myself and that's half the trick of acting."
"To me acting is essentially playing, although obviously there's some craft thrown in. As kids, my brother and I used to pretend we were private eyes, for example, wandering around solving crimes and we used to believe it and totally enter that world. That's basically what I'm still trying to do as an adult actor."
He's lucky to have had his parents' support, both as a child and later in his adult ambitions to act -- "My parents have been my biggest allies," he says. Sadly, his mother Charlotte was killed in a car crash in India two years ago. She had been on set for Band of Brothers, but did not live to see her son's work come to fruition -- "and that is a real sadness," Lewis says, "but in the end, there is no right time for somebody to die. She may have lived to see my success, but then not seen me marry or become a father. It would have been as hard to lose here whenever she had died." Wisely, following the tragedy, he took some time off: "You need time to reflect on things and let them affect you. The temptation is to lose yourself in the work and try to forget by running around playing other people, but I think you also have to face up to it and to be simply yourself, too. That, I think, is healthy."

HELLO, 4/15/03:

Damian Lewis is starting to feel famous. "It happens a little bit when I'm in America. I'm the guy people will come up to in the store and go, 'Hey, man, loved your work,' but they may not even remember my name, so it isn't a big deal. In Britain, especially since The Forsyte Saga, I've graduated to being not just, 'You know ... that guy ....' but 'Damian Lewis.' It's really nice, actually. If you're in a restaurant and someone takes care of you, or if you're in a department store looking for socks or something and suddenly some guy is being really helpful because he liked something he saw you in on TV, it's a good feeling."
[He has] an easy-going manner and a quietly devastating wit . ...
Damian was born in London, the son of a successful insurance broker, and raised in circumstances which he admits to having been comfortable. "It's kind of an American term to say that I was a privileged kid, but I guess it would be true. My parents didn't have loads of money, but my grandparents were quite well off: My grandfather was in business in Australia with Eric Murdoch -- Rupert Murdoch's father -- when his newspaper empire was growing, so he made his money selling news print there. And on my mother's side there was a family called Bowater, who owned the firm Bowater-Scott, which made loo roll and stuff like that. I had a nice childhood -- which doesn't necessarily follow from being well-off. I was lucky."
He first became interested in acting as a child, appearing in Gilbert and Sullivan productions at his prep school, Ashdown House, where he also won a prize for playing Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream. After Eton, he attended the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, then spent his twenties paying his acting dues in the theatre and gradually becoming known as a competent TV actor.
"I can only do two accents -- English and American -- but I'm lucky that I can do American, because that's kind of an invitation into the American film community and, in my business, it's a natural extension of things that you want to go to America. I had been getting great TV work in Britain -- the best. But if you want to make more than one movie every two years, you've got to get out of England to do it, because there's no money for movies there. And if you want to make a movie on the grand scale that I want to make movies, then you have to come to America. It was because I could convince people -- rightly or wrongly -- that I was American that I got offered the part in Dreamcatcher."
About filming Dreamcatcher in the small town with nothing to do: "I even starting going to the gym, which is something I never do!"
"The fact is that it's difficult to keep even friends over a long period of time -- never mind romance -- when you're changing and moving in different directions in your career. I do make a point of keeping up with my buddies, and for me the most important thing in the world is to go back to London, sit in a pub and have a beer with four or five close friends. And after that, I go out and try to find a girl!"
He lives in Camden, north London, and says that, movie success or not, he has no intention of relocating to America. "I love coming to Los Angeles, though. I come here a lot. If I have a reason to be here -- like this press junket -- I feel I might as well make it a two-week trip, take some meetings, whatever. Then I'm happy to go back. London's my home. I own a house there and I can't see myself going through the whole emotional upheaval of moving. Besides, even if I did move here, I'd never spend any time here -- most movies are shot on location in Timbuktu or somewhere!"

THE WESTERN MAIL, 4/18/03:

He made a brief appearance in a dodgy version of Robinson Crusoe starring Pierce Brosnan. "I was killed before the opening credits had finished rolling," he beams, almost with some misguided sense of pride. "I gather it's currently number two in the Czech video charts."
Meeting Lewis is a delightful experience. If this is one of Britain's most talked-about emerging superstars, the lad himself has no airs or graces, no trace of self-importance. He jokes and teases -- something of a surprise for someone who's made a speciality of playing it mean and moody on screen, whether as the emotionally crippled Soames of The Forsyte Saga (series two is on its way, folks) or the broodingly heroic Major Richard Winters in Band of Brothers.
Aah, but we're forgetting his Jeffrey Archer, in the BBC's deliciously mad spoof of the disgraced politician's weirder-than-fiction life. "Of course I can do comedy, and I'd love to do some more," says Lewis. "There's a gulf between one's own self-perception and the way people view you. I wouldn't have thought it was a huge leap for me to do comedy, because I feel quite clownish most of the time anyway. And to be honest, Soames Forsyte is pretty funny. He's dark, controlling and tragic, yes, but he's a strangely comedic figure in his buttoned-up way, a bit buffoonish. That's why I got Jeffrey Archer - The Truth."
"Jonesy starts off as a really great guy until he gets possessed by an evil alien and snaps into this kind of BBC World Service speech, because that's the way he thinks human beings are. It's quite sweet that the alien is so old-fashioned." Playing two characters - the likeable Jonesy and "Mr. Gray" , the alien who takes him over - proved quite a challenge for Lewis, but he rose to it. "It was a lot of fun, as it's kind of two for the price of one acting, just lots of showing off, basically, jumping backwards and forwards between two characters," he says.
"This is the guy who did The Big Chill, iconic stuff that you've kind of grown up with," enthuses Lewis. "It's fantastic being in a room with him. It's fantastic being in a room with Morgan Freeman, and other young American actors like Donnie Wahlberg, Tom Sizemore and Jason Lee. And we were filming a Stephen King novel, who's the biggest selling novelist in history! So you do kind of keep pinching yourself."
Somehow it's almost hard to believe that this is Lewis's first major movie, and he understands that feeling. "Yes, my first American movie, if you will, and really my first film, full stop," he smiles. "I did Band of Brothers, The Forsyte Saga for ITV and Warriors for the BBC, and they are the three big things I've done, I guess; they've been seen around the world, but I've never done a film. "Then Larry (Kasdan) saw Band of Brothers and loved it, and asked to see me for Dreamcatcher. When I read the script - and I've seen so much mediocre rubbish - I thought it was far more original than anything I'd read previously, and with Larry directing it, I could hardly say no, so it was an incredible introduction, basically."

BBC, 4/22/03

"[Kasdan's] made some of my favorite movies: 'The Big Chill,' 'The Accidental Tourist,' 'Body Heat.'"

THE TICKET, 4/25/03:

"I could get rid of my London house and buy a new one in Los Angeles, but if I was working I'd only live in it for a month a year. These days, movies are made all over the place. you are far more likely to be shooting in Vancouver or Poland or Manibia, say, than working in Los Angeles. They don't make that many films there now. My family and friends are all around London and I would really miss them if I did leave the city for good. London is my town and, when I'm away from it, I realise how much I like it. And every time I go to America it occurs to me how European I am. Americans and American films have a different sensibility to Europeans. I'm not saying one is better, they're just different. If there was a movie industry in Europe that was like the one in Hollywood -- with a studio system and big films being made all the time -- I wouldn't think of going to LA at all."
In Dreamcatcher, he plays another American, Prof. Gary "Jonesy" Jones, but his character slips into an aristocratic English voice when Jonesy's body is taken over by an alien. This rather complicated scenario calls on Damian to have conversations with himself using both voices -- and it is to his great credit that he manages to pull it off.

WOMAN, 4/03:

Damian Lewis wasn't raised to fall apart under pressure. He's an Old Etonian with lots of self-assurance, inner discipline, charm, impeccable manners and so on.
"You grew up watching big films like Raiders of the Lost Arc or Lawrence of Arabia, and of course you dreamed of being part of something so huge."
"[Soames is] the kind of role that leaves you needing a couple of drinks just to loosen up a the end of the day."
Damian isn't set too much on partying. He's got a strong work ethic, instilled in him by his mum. "When we were little, Mum didn't much like us slouching around the place. In our house, there was always a philosophy of working hard and being useful. So now, whatever I'm doing, I feel I have to give it my all. I fully expect, and want, to work hard."
While on holiday in India (2001), his parents were involved in a car accident, and Damian's mum, Charlotte, was killed.
"Mum was a beautiful, gorgeous woman. She was the best mother I could have hoped for. That she died when she did still seems so shocking and cruel."
"The temptation is to throw yourself into your work. That can be a kind of therapy and escape, but I do think you have to give yourself time to grieve. I've tried to do that because, otherwise, I suspect it will hurt you more later."
Charlotte visited him on the set for Band of Brothers, but didn't live to see the stunning reviews.
"It's sad, but there's never a right time for someone to die. She could have seen my success and then died before I got married or had my first child. Whenever tragedy happens, it's devastating, and there's always a sense that someone should have been given more time."
"It's not easy to maintain a relationship when you're constantly away. At the moment, I'm enjoying just being single."
Rather uniquely in this day and age, Damian -- who recently (before 4/03) bought a swish property in Camden -- has never lived with a woman.
"Maybe it's just fear, or that old-fashioned thing of not wanting to live with someone until I know that I'm going to marry them. Or maybe I just don't want to share my habits with anyone else." ... "My ugly habits." It's difficult to imagine that Damian, being the perfect English gent, could have any of those. ...

SHE, 4/03:

Damian Lewis and I are on our way to lunch. As soon as we step into a lift full of young female executives, you can feel the temperature rise. When somebody asks him which floor he wants, he quips, "Ladies lingerie, please." It's a great illustration of the 32-year-old's cheeky charm, and it's easy to see why he's captured women's hearts.
"I read a column by a woman who said 'I must be getting kinky in my old age because I fancy Damian Lewis -- and he's ginger.' I had to laugh: there's such a prejudice towards redheads."
"I'm enjoying being single. I'm away filming a lot, so it's not a great time for a relationship. I'm open to the possibility that I might find someone who's impossible to resist. I've got a fantasy about living in a huge house with my wife and lots of kids. But at the moment, my nephew and god-daughter Coco are enough."
On Los Angeles: "It's somewhere I love to visit, but I don't think I could live there. My oldest friends and family are in Britain."
"I have an older sister who owns a pub, an older brother who's a stockbroker and a younger brother who's a scriptwriter. My dad worked in insurance (he's retired). We grew up in London, where I still live. My mum died two years ago in a car crash in India. We're all only just coming out of the initial shock. I'm going to India soon, for a holiday, I think partly to help me come to terms with what happened."
What keeps you awake? "The builders next door. That and reflecting on decisions I've made. I worry they might not be the right ones. I think too much in a slightly narcissistic way. My problems aren't that interesting, but I give them a lot of attention. As I get older, I tend to mull things over more."
As an old Etonian and an actor, were you worried you'd be typecast as a toff? "Definitely. I didn't tell anyone I went to Eton for ages. In my teens I hung out with lots of people who weren't public school educated and that moderated my accent. At Eton, I was surrounded by handsomely foppish Hugh Grant lookalikes. I was always the comedy redhead.

ESQUIRE, 4/03:

He spent a little time with relatives in Connecticut and Chicago and various other American places during various summers of his youth.

IN STYLE, 4/03:

Nickname: "Damage or Damo, both coming from my name."
Favorite films: "The Apartment, starring Jack Lemmon. I love his comic timing. Also Central Station, a Brazilian film."
Dream co-star: "Ingrid Bergman. She had a coolness and a fire at the same time. I find that dichotomy compelling."
Favorite landmark: "The Egyptian pyramids -- they're amazing. I went there when it was super hot and did the tourist thing: got on a camel and went clippity-cloppiting around the desert. You seem to be in the suburbs of Cairo, and suddenly these pyramids just rise, like out of someone's back garden."
Favorite TV show: "The Office, a half-hour [BBC] sitcom about the epitome of a nightmare boss and the way he manipulates his staff. It's very deadpan, and the writing is fantastic."
Favorite musicians: "I listened to a lot of Elvis. I thought I was Elvis until I was 18. I also liked Supertramp -- very unfashionable. My favorite band right now is Coldplay."
Last three charges on my credit card: "1) An emergency repair for my Sky [cable] TV, 2) shirt at Joseph, in London, 3) a flight from London to Los Angeles."
In three words I am: "Lazy. Impatient. Red."

DAILY EXPRESS, 5/22/03:

"My greatest sadness is that my mother didn't live to see me as TV's Soames." ... "I was very close to my mother. It was terribly sad, although I think as a family we cope well. It was such a shame she didn't live to see me in the first series of The Forsyte Saga. She would have absolutely loved it. That was the sort of thing she always said she wanted me to do -- a nice period costume drama."
He hasn't made up his mind as to whether he will send his own sons, when he has them, to Eton but he was happy there. He wasn't even teased on account of his flaming red hair. "I escaped that and the reason was that I could play sport. That's important when you're at boarding school. I may have been called 'carrot top' or something but that was the extent of it. I was never persecuted, at least not to my face." He was nominated a "debs' delight" long before he was allowed out into the general population to delight the commoner sort of girl. "I went to a party when I was about 18 and someone asked me for my address, which I just thought was very friendly. Then I got a bunch of invitations from people I had never heard of. It was only then that a friend pointed out to me that I had been put on a guest list and had become a debs' delight. I didn't know that kind of thing still existed."
On working with Robert Redford: "As soon as he opens his mouth, 30 years of cinema flash before you -- all those films that I loved and grew up with such as Butch Cassidy, The Great Gatsby, All The President's Men. I'll never forget being in the queue in the coffee tent on location and suddenly realising that Robert Redford was standing behind me."
Lewis's red hair (shared with a brother and a sister but not with his parents or grandparents) is a mystery to him. "It must be a recessive gene," he muses. It might also have something to do with his Welshness. "I don't speak Welsh and I'm a bit of a faux Welshman but I always think I ought to be included in those photo-spreads they do of the Welsh boys -- Ioan Gruffudd, Matthew Rhys and Rhys Ivans."

TV & SATELLITE WEEK, 5/24/03:

"If people with red hair can be perceived as sexy and land romantic leads, then that has to be good for redheads in general. It's fun to be able to challenge the status quo. Tom Hanks said to me, 'you're going to be the first-ever red-headed film star.' It's certainly looking that way."
As the dramatic dynasty returns to our screens this Sunday, the sadistic Soames -- played with glorious suppressed fury by Damian Lewis -- is vexed once again.

SUNDAY EXPRESS, 5/25/03:

"There was a point when I started thinking, 'Maybe I'll never be a TV or film actor, maybe I'm too big or too orange and I'll stay in theatre,' but I got over it. I didn't feel envious of peers who were making movies at 25 -- I was still too busy running around big stages shouting. I had too much energy and the theatre was the best place for me."
"I love what is happening. It's given me a career in America and lots of choices about what to do next, which is something every actor wants."
"I'm single now. I was in a relationship but I don't want to talk about it. I don't get knickers sent to me in the post -- sadly. And the celebrity thing is fun to do as long as you know it's just a game. But if you start to live and breathe it, then you are in trouble. That's my take on it, but watch this space and see how badly I screw up!"
His mesmerizing performance as Major Dick Winters in Band of Brothers matched anything his contemporaries have achieved.

SUNDAY MIRROR, 5/25/03

"Sexy? My hair? Well I never looked at it that way. But if I'm striking a blow for red-haired blokes everywhere, good. We've been misunderstood. People always thought you had to be a bit kinky to fancy a redhead."
"I'm not a workaholic, but I'm single, and I enjoy what I do. Traveling prevents me from having a proper relationship, so I have chosen not to have one. In the past I was only ever involved in long-distance ones and frankly I don't want that kind again. When I was younger, it would be an explosive romantic weekend. Don't get me wrong, that's great, but it does prevent a relationship from ever moving on to the next level. One day I want to be in a situation where you can just hang out with each other, be friends, do the ordinary domestic things, have an argument, live with each other, and share a bed most nights. So far I've never been able to do all that. Right now I'm happy being single. But I know my priorities will change."
The important people in his life are his family and friends, especially his brothers William and Gareth. He and Gareth bought a house together in London, but last year the inevitable happened -- one of them found a wife and the other moved out. Damian was best man. "I don't cry easily, but I did get choked at his wedding. It was the best moment of my life so far, seeing Gareth get married. I was so nervous ... I almost caused chaos. When we got to the church I discovered I'd forgotten the buttonholes, including the groom's. I had to nick a rose off someone and explain that Gareth needed it more."
He was known as "Carrot-Top" at Eton.
"When I was growing up Mum and Dad would always say to me: 'We love you whatever, just do your best at what you do, otherwise you'll be disappointed with yourself.' That was loving and encouraging, a philosophy ingrained in me. I'm not ambitious in the sense of wanting a jet, five cars and seven houses. But I want to achieve a quality of life. Given a choice, I'd want a four-bedroom house in a smart area like Primrose Hill in London, rather than in Streatham. I valued my childhood. I remember having quite grown-up conversations with Mum and Dad."
Two years ago, Damian's mother was killed in a car accident, a tragedy that haunts him. "We were close, I still think about her a lot."
A couple of years before he had narrowly escaped death in a motorcycle accident. He was traveling home from the London Barbican, where he was appearing in Shakespeare's Cymbeline, when his bike collided with a taxi. He was thrown through the windscreen, knocked unconscious, and his jaw shattered. "The situation wasn't without humour. The passenger in the cab was a nurse, but he was drunk, so all he could do was hold on to me until I came round."
"The day we filmed the rape scene [in The Forsyte Saga] was September 11, 2001. One of the crew told us that two planes had flown into the World Trade Center. Then we had to carry on filming. It was a strange day."

NEW!, 5/26/03:

"I tried to help this lady in Trafalgar Square one Saturday night because she looked far too well-presented to be in the state she was in. It was about three in the morning, and she was basically lying on the pavement. I was with some friends and we felt we couldn't just leave her there. We wanted to put her in a cab and send her home. We tried to get an address out of her as we were staggering with her towards the taxi rank, when suddenly she turned on me and started screaming at the top of her voice: 'you're horrible, you're that man!' I couldn't believe it. I wanted to just leave here there and run, but we managed to help her and quickly left the scene!"
What's refreshing about Lewis is that he doesn't mind admitting he adores being a star.
He unashamedly admits to standing in front of a mirror when he was a kid being "interviewed" by the likes of Terry Wogan. It paid off: these days he gives real interviews with grace and charm.
When I remind him we met in the days before Hollywood scripts regularly landed on his door mat, he's genuinely anxious to know that he hasn't changed too much. "I'm still the same person, aren't I? I really hope no one thinks I've gone off big headed. I mean, it's just a job, isn't it?" I can tell him with honesty that no, he hasn't changed. He might be wearing a more expensive suit and he's certainly got more people wandering in and out asking if he needs anything, but Lewis is the same friendly and affable guy I met on the set of the BBC drama Hearts and Bones.
Two long-term relationships -- one with actress Elie Garnett and another with TV producer Katie Razzall -- have already bitten the dust and he admits he finds it hard to commit. On the day we meet he reveals, "I'm currently single and enjoying myself -- for the time being anyway. It's not ideal, but I go away a lot so it's about life management basically."
On his success: "It's funny because when I was at drama school I never imagined failing and I always believed it'd work out because I didn't stop to think otherwise. Now I'm lucky enough to be in the position I'm in, I want to enjoy it. I don't want to keep thinking about the next step because I want to make the most of what I'm doing here and now. I'm having a ball."

EMPIRE, 5/03:

In Dreamcatcher, British actor Damian Lewis ... plays a character who commences the movie getting mown down by a car. A deliberate reference to King's own collision with a van, it wasn't much of a stretch for Lewis. In 1998, he came out second-best in an encounter with a London taxi cab while riding home from the theatre on his motorbike. "I actually hit the frame of the windscreen. Thank God I had a full-face helmet on, rather than the open-face one I usually wore. I suppose I might be dead. Certainly I would've had my face rearranged. I was out cold in the road for five minutes before I woke up to see this male nurse who had been in the back of the cab. I could feel him gripping my pulse and he told me that it had disappeared for a while." He pauses to take in the significance, "Yeah, it's kind of weird, isn't it?" Pragmatic and intelligent, Lewis is not one to take stock in such things.
[He] grew up on Abbey Road in London.
On Jeffrey Archer: The Truth: "Ha! Well, it was all getting a bit serious and I'd never considered myself a serious actor -- I had done comedy in theatre. You put Band and Forsyte together and there are not a lot of laughs around. It was really fun to do something silly and Naked Gun-ish."

SUN SENTINEL, 6/25/03:

Q: Please settle a bet. Is that fine actor, Damian Lewis, American or British? A: The son of an insurance broker, Lewis was raised in London, but spent his vacations with relatives in Connecticut and Illinois. "I developed an ear for the nuances of American speech," he says. "And I'm glad I did, because if you want to make movies on a regular basis you've got to work in Hollywood."

SYDNEY MORNING HERALD, 8/25/03:

Quote from Sita Williams: "The minute Damian walked in the room there was no question he was Soames. He had a complete self-assurance and self-belief, an arrogance, if you like. He understood the character completely."
[Sita] Williams produces a postcard from our own fair shores: "Dear Granada TV," it reads, "We will give you Ian Thorpe, Pat Rafter, Russell Crowe, Hugh Jackman, Heath Ledger and 10 Bondi lifesavers, bronze and firm of thigh, in exchange for one Damian Lewis. Please contact us to make the necessary arrangements. Kind regards, the women of Australia." ... "I'm too weak to not find it flattering," laughs Lewis later that day when the postcard is brought up. "I'm sure there is some careful and clever game to be played with how your persona takes shape as an actor and I'm not sure what route one has to take. But I think if you just become a sex symbol ... then you have the sex symbol's lament. 'Oh, God, I always play the handsome guy who is dependable and solid,' and those actors are always hungry for character roles. I think there is a path between the two where you have a foot in either camp."

TELEGRAPH, 9/12/03:

We are on the point of choosing the same fish dish when he decides this is a bad idea. "We should have different things, so we can taste each other's." Remembering this is something he must have said to women who are not necessarily keeping a professional distance, he changes his mind. "I think we can both have the sole. It's not as if we're lovers."
A couple of weeks ago, he received 40 pairs of knickers in the post, knickers of "every imaginable size and shape," from women united in admiration of his Soames, his sex appeal, and maybe his unapologetic gingeriness. That's the sort of fan mail he gets these days. "I threw them away, though not immediately. They were strewn about my bedroom for a while. I didn't know what to do with them. Who would have wanted a furry thong for Christmas?" After he had disposed of them, tramps visited his rubbish bin and he returned from dinner one evening to find a trail of knickers stretching, as in an adults-only version of Hansel and Gretel, from his house in Camden all the way down his street. "I spent half an hour in the dark collecting pants. Thank you to everybody who sent them."
"If your ambitions to do well, it's what you strive for: a certain level of recognition. I don't mean in the supermarket, but within your profession."
"I was brought up to do the best and get the most out of everything, whether it's football or going for a walk. To commit. It can make for a restless life. Mum and Dad were absolutely as one over this. There was no pushiness. They were just saying: we think this will give you the most rewarding life. you knew they would love you whatever you did."
"When I hit 30, I thought I'd arrived at the age I was always meant to be. I remember relaxing, being less tense, trying less hard. I felt more of a man, less of a boy. Then, paradoxically, you allow yourself to be boyish and to act younger because you are confident. You become an all-round nicer person, I think. He gives one of those Soamesy smiles, engaging just one corner of his mouth. "I'm not sure if it's lasted." He categorises his faults quite fluently, possibly because none of them makes him sound like a brute or a cad. He's impatient, conservative, controlling and indecisive. And the redhead's traditional temper? "I go quiet. Like Soames." He also has an annoying habit of making a simple question seem heavy with unimagined complexities. The dish of dauphinoise potatoes he has ordered is still untouched. Does he cook? "Do I cook?" he echoes. "Difficult to know what that question means. Do I cook for myself three times a week and enjoy it? No. Do I eat at home once a week and eat out the rest of the time? Yes. Do I like inviting people over and cooking for them? Yes." This can become tiring. Then there's his love of riddles. When I ask if there is a significant woman in his life right now (there apparently isn't), he rambles on about liking the idea of "liberation through denial," of focusing on one thing, to the exclusion of other things that may seem tempting, exciting and alluring. "There have been times when I have lived my life that way and other times when I have flagrantly not; when I have been just living life in a pick-and-mix way." And which phase is he in now, the ascetic or the pick-and-mix? "I'm not sure. I am in transition" Another crooked smile. "And you don't know which way." I give up. It seems much simpler to plunge, with separate forks, into the pommes dauphinoises.

OFFICIAL LONDON THEATRE, 11/1/03:

Quote from Tom Hanks: "We were looking for an enigmatic leader, a guy you can't explain, but how explains himself by his mere presence. Lewis had that without question, as soon as he sat down we knew."

TELEGRAPH, 12/9/03:

Michael Attenborough, his director [of Five Gold Rings] at the Almeida, says Lewis's great strengths are emotional accuracy and love of language. "He is very controlled but shows you a wealth of feeling beneath the surface. His scenes with Helen McCrory are lovely."

OFFICIAL LONDON THEATRE, 12/11/03:

His fame has reached such heights that he was apparently sent 40 pairs of knickers (of "every imaginable size and shape") in the post last month. "I threw them away, though not immediately. They were strewn about my bedroom for a while. I didn't know what to do with them. Who would have wanted a furry thong for Christmas?"

INDIELONDON.CO.UK (2003):

But, as Kasdan points out: "He's an extraordinary actor. He's magnetic, charismatic and soulful. And he plays an American very easily. I was knocked out by his ability. This may have been his first film but it won't be his last, that's for sure."
Q. Was it hard to watch yourself in the crash scene, it's very graphic? A. What the accident or me acting? (laughs) Because that's always quite hard the first time. Well, I've had a bad motorbike crash myself, and 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 you and the blur and sounds of a ring of faces peering down at you. And the cliched way of shooting someone who has been in an accident, which we've all seen, you put the camera and look up at the faces and it's all blurred and there are lights and, you know, sirens in the distance, is exactly what it is like when you wake up from a crash when you have been knocked out on the street.
Q. When was that? A. It was 1998.
Q. What was the bike? A. I was riding a Triumph Sprint 900. I was in London, I had just been on stage with the Royal Shakespeare Company, we were doing Much Ado About Nothing. A cab pulled out, it was just a typical cliched motorbike accident, where I was the only thing in the road and I saw him 400 yards back and I got 200 and I thought 'well he has obviously seen me' and then 50, and then he just pulled out. It's just one of those things when you are riding a bike, it's going to happen to you at some point. People just don't see you.
Q. And how badly hurt were you? A. Amazingly, I broke nothing but I had concussion for three months.

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