Damian's Dominion: The Damian Lewis Digest

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

EVENING STANDARD, 1/28/05:

At an evening gala to mark the 25th anniversary of the opening of The Almeida Theatre in Islington,] Carrot-topped actor Damian Lewis frolicked for the photographers and boasted: "I'm chair of the committee so I've actually got something to do with all this." "Oh yeah? What?" asked one guest. "Not a lot," Lewis confessed.

DAILY TELEGRAPH, 2/17/05:

When there's a new collection to launch, fashion designers aren't usually averse to using their celebrity friends as models in the hope of gaining that extra touch of free publicity. So when Spy bumped into British actor Damian Lewis at the Elle Style Awards on Tuesday night, it was refreshing to hear that the carrot-topped star is happy to leave the modelling game to the professionals. "Jasper Conran once asked me to appear in one of his shows," he tells me. "He's an old friend of mine and I am dressed from head to toe in his stuff tonight. I did think about doing it, but decided the catwalk would be a bad idea for me -- I'd just end up falling flat on my face."

CONTACTMUSIC.COM, 3/4/05:

"I would never move to Los Angeles full-time. I love living in London. I go to LA for six weeks at a time for business - it feels like a guilty pleasure."

DAILY MAIL WEEKEND MAGAZINE, 3/19/05:

Do you drink too much Damian? "Yes." Drugs? "Have done." Heavy drugs? "No comment."
"I'm not a worthy person," says Damian. ... "I take my work seriously and I take my friends and family seriously, but I enjoy the fripperies of the business. I enjoy the frivolty. I gave Kate Blanchett an award at the Elle Stye Awards, which was huge fun because I'm such a huge fan. I do go out quite a lot and enjoy myself."
Damian, 34, has been linked to an astonishing number of women. ... He finds the gossip columnists' obsession with his "friends" amusing. He is also tickled at being dubbed one of Britain's most eligible bachelors. "I'm too shallow not to enjoy it," he says. "It happened with The Forsyte Saga. Soames appealed to some women. Given that he is a misogynist, racist, homophobe, it's pretty interesting. Am I promiscuous? I don't think so. I was a serial monogamist and I needed not to be, so I've been single for a year and a half. I suppose I'll stay single until I'm knocked over by a hot gust of wind and a beautiful vision. I've never lived with anybody - never moved in with a girl. I've always had my own place. I equate moving in with someone to being married to them. It's either old-fashioned or because I'm terrified. Either way, I don't quite understand sharing my life entirely with someone, unless it was the person I thought I might share the rest of life with." So has he ever met anyone he thought might do? "No." What about Katie? "Katie is fabulous, wonderful person," he says. "The only reason not to marry someone like Katie is because you're not ready to. When Katie married Ollie it didn't upset me. We love each other very much. Ollie is fantastic and he is a friend of mine. I went to the wedding. If it had upset me I wouldn't have gone. I wasn't upset at all. I didn't want to marry Katie at that time. It never got that far anyway. It was never discussed."
Damian says, "McGrade [his character in "Colditz"] is an iconoclast. He's also fragile, vulnerable, piggish, stubborn, charismatic, hot-headed and deceiving -- and, yes, I am like him in some ways. Colditz is quite a bleak, grown-up piece. It's about people who understand confinement - the idea of being trapped by your passions, the idea of cyles in life repeating themselves and people not learning from their mistakes and moving on. Certainly, I'm very slow to learn from my mistakes. It's easy to make observations about other people and feel you're learning about life and understanding things, but sometimes I think I'm slow to make it relevant to me. So, I sublimely go along continuing my mistakes -- over almost everything."
"My mother's death is the single most important thing that's happened to me in my life," he says. "My parents were wonderfully, happily married. Dad didn't get married until he was 39. Mum had been married once before. Amanda and William were born and her first husband died of heart failure. Then she married my dad. They were married for 30 years, blissfully. Then mum died four years ago and that ended that. Dad is on his own now. I'd rather not talk about the car crash. Father was with her. It was a terrible, terrible, thing to happen to him. We were all scattered everywhere. Gareth was in Russia. I was in Los Angeles. William and Amanda were at home. We all heard about it in different places. "
Damian says it is 'too complex' to discuss how his mother's death changed him. Suffice to say, he is visibly moved when he talks about her. He remembers a hugely confident woman who infused her children with love and confidence, despite the fact that, at eight years old, he was sent to prep school, Ashdown House in Sussex, to board, and from there to Eton. Indeed, he says his only unpleasant childhood memory is kissing a girl. "She lived in my street and I had this overwhelming feeling that I'd done something wrong. I fely guilt about it for years and couldn't get over it. I remember kissing her and that felt wrong. I fely dirty, sullied." Damian's was a disciplined, mannered childhood. They never went to bed late and always had to call male grown-ups "sir." Any misbehavior was firmly "spanked out" of him by his mother. Their home could also be a noisy place. "We come from quite a loud, garrulous, curious, challenging family. At Sunday lunches, the volume levels were cranked right up. If you didn't get your point out, saying it loudly, quickly and succinctly, you didn't get in, so there was a lot of confidence that was bred from that. There was never a sense of being sent away. Ashdown House was just the best school to go to. I did experience that moment of homesickness, though. You miss your mum, you cry a bit, you sit and spend a week feeling a bit miserable, and then you calm down. I have always wondered, though, whether, it is legitimate to put a child of that age through an experience which is traumatic. For a child to have to learn defence mechanisms at that age to avoid being teased, to avoid being the one that's left behind, the odd one out, to avoid being the wettie and crying, is asking them to grow up incredibly quickly. I wasn't unhappy, though. Mother and Father always made it clear how much I was loved and cherished. They always said, "We'll love you no matter who you are or what you do. All we can expect of you is that you do your best. It was a double-edged sword. Immediately, you feel loved and valued whatever happens, but at the same time you know you'll be letting yourself down unless you try your hardest. On the one hand, there's their wonderful attitude to life which is, 'It's there for the enjoying. Go out and enjoy it.' On the other, it's that they'll feel let down if you don't always give your best. That dichotomy runs in me the whole time."
Damian excelled at Ashdown House. He was captain of the school football, cricket and rugby teams and was already demonstrating a talent for drama. Each summer the school staged a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. Damian had a sweet, treble voice and sang solos. Eton was a tougher place. "It was easy to be kingpin at your prep school," he says. "At public school there were lots of kingpins, so you had to dig in a bit. Being a teenager there was all about affecting the most laid-back, I-don't-care attitude towards everything. Underneath, of course, you're pedalling away furiously, trying the best you can without being seen to be trying. To be seen to be trying was considered vulgar. You played the game and played it well. The game was to be witty, charming, urbane. I was very conscious of never being caught out. Don't give anything away. Don't show a chink in your armour. Don't show a weakness, because someone will be at you. I remember that very clearly. You're a mess underneath because you're a mass of insecurities and uncertainties, thinking, 'Oh God, will girls like me? Am I funny enough? Am I bright enough? Am I good enough at this or good enough at that?'"
Damian left Eton for the Guildhall School of Music and Drama wanting to sever all ties to his posh upbringing, never even mentioning Eton in early interviews. "It made me feel I couldn't be a genuine moody actor," he says. "The Guildhall was wonderful. It was what I needed; what I chose. I didn't want to go to university. I couldn't quite see an end to Sloaney drink parties. Drink parties were what I knew -- although socially my happiest times were going to Dorking every summer to play in a tennis tournament and stay with cousins. There was nothing Sloaney or public school about that."
"Twenty-nine was always the age I was going to get married. It seemed a sensible age," he says. "But I've always lived pretty day to day -- just tearing around. My first grown-up girlfriend, with whom I did grown-up things, was a girl called Beth. And I spent several years with a girl with a bipolar manic depressive disorder. It was hard to be with someone suffering with that. There were exhilarating times -- particularly with the highs, even the lows were dealable with. It's the mixed state that is the hardest. You find yourself all over the place."
"I've always had this idea of a tumbledown family house -- artistic, not too posh, but elegant and beautiful -- somewhere in north London. There are times when I'm walking on Primrose Hill in the summertime and I have a tremendous nostalgia for that life that I might have. I think finding the person that you want to spend the rest of your entire life with is part of one's innate ambition in life."

WESTERN MAIL, 3/19/05:

"Give me an accent!" laughs Lewis. "Some actors run a mile, scared of accents. For me, it's a major carrot to do a regional accent, and I enjoy the process of perfecting them."
With all this work coming out, might it be fair to describe Lewis as a workaholic? And is work more important to him than a personal life? He shakes his head meaningfully. "God, no," he says. "I value more highly than I can say, the idea of family, marriage and kids. But, more importantly, what I do know is that you've got to be ready for it...."

MANCHESTER EVENING NEWS, 3/21/05:

"I value more highly than I can say, family and the idea of marriage and kids. But what I do know is that you've got to be ready for it. And I might not be quite ready just yet."
"... there were a lot of women who fell in love with Soames and thought he was hard done by. How do you explain that? That British women are a little bit kinky? I don't know."
Regarding reports that he had an affair with [Colditz] co-star Sophia [Myles]: "No, it's not true, though we shot a couple of sex scenes together, and I enjoyed them -- but it's good acting."
"Flirting's just air, isn't it? It's oxygen. It's important that people can have a good flirt without it being dangerous or predatory."
"I went on a football tour once to Denmark and we were nearly locked up. But that's another story. ..."

BIRMINGHAM POST, 3/25/2005

"Flirting is just air, it's like oxygen, and I think it's important to be able to do it without it being dangerous or predatory."
"I value more highly than I can say the idea of marriage and kids, but what I do know is that you have to be ready for it, and I might not be quite ready just yet."
"There's a lot of emotional responsibility towards one's friends, so if a mate turns up with a new girlfriend, before you just accept them as part of your family, you want to be sure that it's going somewhere -- and during that process that prevents you falling in love with them."
Regarding the rumours linking him romantically with Sophia Myles: "No it's not true at all -- it's probably because we went to the Layer Cake premiere together, but then again anything can happen after a couple of Camparis!" He laughs loudly, clearly amused by the very suggestion.
"It's a trait of mine for me to defend my characters -- you cannot play somebody convincingly if you don't have empathy or understanding with them."
"I want to play a cowboy," he grins. "Good, bad or ugly, it doesn't matter."
"I used to keep my school very quiet because I thought it was damaging. I think you can't be really posh and be an interesting actor -- I'm a bit of posh rough."

TV CHOICE, 3/26/05:

"[While filming Colditz] I loved doing my own fight stunts and chasing a moving train across a viaduct high in the beautiful Czech mountains. And doing stunt falls as we escaped through the countryside. Generally, anything which made me feel like an action hero!"

RADIO TIMES, 3/26/05:

"I was asked to play a working-class Glaswegian, and any actor would be flattered by a producer presuming you could do that. I've got a bit of Scottish blood in me -- hence the red hair, I suppose. But just wait for the letters to come in ... 'Why does this man sound like a cross between Billy Connolly and Ally McCoist?'"

WHAT'S ON TV, 3/26/05:

"There's nothing worse than feeling out of control and helplessly in love. I do believe in true and profound love that can drive you to do things you wouldn't otherwise do."
"Suffice it to say I've been single for a while but work's kept me so busy I haven't had chance to meet many women. I do, however, get lots of strange things sent to me from fans around the world, so I do feel loved."

TELEGRAPH, 3/26/05:

Monday [March 14]: "The week began sadly, with a friend's funeral. Afterwards, I had to pick myself up for the première of Colditz, a new multi-million-pound TV drama in which I play a hot-headed and devious Glaswegian colonel. I am never entirely happy seeing my own performance on screen, but it was good to catch up with the rest of the cast -- including Sophia Myles, James Fox and Tom Hardy -- over drinks afterwards. I hadn't seen some of them since last year's shoot in the Czech Republic."
Tuesday [March 15]: "In the morning I checked out a nightclub where I'm holding a party on Saturday to celebrate the arrival of spring. The theme is Brazilian carnival, but my outfit makes me look like a 1970s glam rocker. Afterwards, I went to the Caravaggio exhibition at the National Gallery, which was stunning. I've been working abroad a lot recently -- on a Greek film for Martin Scorsese, and alongside Robert Redford and Jennifer Lopez in Lasse Hallström's next Miramax movie -- so it's nice to have some time in London."
Wednesday [March 16]: "I started the day with a trip to the physiotherapist. I crocked my knee playing football at the weekend after leaping for a header like a 17-year-old and landing like an 80-year-old. In the evening, I went to the excellent new production of Hedda Gabler at the Almeida. It made me think how much I would like to get back on the stage."
Thursday [March 17]: "First thing, I booked tickets to New York. I fly out on Monday for a meeting about a film starring Nicole Kidman as the photographer Diane Arbus. I'm hoping to play her husband, but it's still in the balance. The last time I did a big Hollywood movie -- Dreamcatcher, with Morgan Freeman -- it was a big flop. Later, I read from a new play at the launch of a production company in Leicester Square, after which everyone piled into the Groucho Club. I ended up at the piano, drunkenly playing rock and roll tunes. When I got home, I wrote in my diary: 'Must remember not to do that too often.'"
Friday [March 18]: "I woke up early and rushed off to ITV to talk about Colditz on This Morning. They made me read the Autocue to introduce the next guest (something I've always wanted to do). I'm going to be a regional news presenter in an updated version of Much Ado About Nothing for the BBC, so I hung around afterwards to gauge the levels of stress behind the scenes on live TV. In the afternoon, I went to a studio to re-record some dialogue for Chromophobia, a new film by Martha Fiennes, and discovered that they might use some of my piano-playing on the soundtrack -- a terrifying prospect."

SUNDAY MIRROR CELEBS MAGAZINE, 3/27/05:

Are you a gadget man? "I like my sports car. I just got a little Mazda MX5 -- it's only a cheap and cheerful one really. It's titanium, a sort of greyish colour. I'm not exactly obsessed by toys. I don't have a plasma TV, just a normal one, though I suppose it's still quite big. I do have an i-Pod, although I need to learn how to download my music. You can pay people to do that can't you? I heard you can pay someone £200 and they'll download you 5,000 songs. I think I'll do that, because to be honest, I'm a bit clueless."
"I have never auditioned for the role of James Bond. It would be difficult not to consider it -- helicopter rides to sunny locations and let's not forget the Bond girls. Halle Berry was pretty good in that bikini, but my favourite was Grace Jones."
Do you have a temper? "I get very frustrated sitting in traffic. I want to get out of my car and smash people's windscreens in ... but obviously, I don't."
"I don't date a certain type of woman. I'm attracted to humour, beauty -- although, that's in the eyes of the beholder -- and grace. Movement in a woman is very important to me. A woman must be elegant. But wit and intelligence are must-haves."
"I think I would be pretty embarrassed if I had to take everything off in front of a camera crew, but I don't mind doing sex scenes. It's part of the job isn't it? If you're working with someone who's fun, it makes the sex scenes less difficult."
Did you get hate mail after starring as Soames Forsyte in The Forsyte Saga? "No. I got weird, kinky love mail. British women are weird -- they like cold men. They sent in photos asking me to call them. Obviously I never did. I'd never go out with a fan who wrote to me. Although a friend of mine is marrying a fan of his. He was in a play and she was in the audience. She sent him a note backstage saying she wanted to meet him afterwards for a drink. It worked out. He's lucky, because she's an amazing woman."
Do you believe in marriage? "Yes. I'm from a stable family background. My mum's no longer alive, but when she was, my parents were very solid. I don't believe marriage is smooth and easy the whole time. I also don't believe it's possible to remain faithful throughout the marriage, but I do believe in staying together."
What was the last lie you told? "The last lie was to Equity -- I lied about how much I earned. How much do I earn? I'm not telling you that. Not enough. I used to have tons of white lies up my sleeve because I'm always late meeting people -- always. Now, people don't want to hear my excuses. I think it's expected I'll be late."
Did you ever get picked on while at school at Eton? "No, never. I was pretty popular."
Even though you are a redhead? "Yes. I love being a redhead -- always have done. I dyed it dark brown once for a job. Never again. It takes forever to grow out. I feel like I've done it. I have no plans to go black, bleach blond or any other colour for that matter."
What would you do if you were invisible for the day? "I can't say what I just thought of because it's unrepeatable. I would get myself to America and get on a spaceship and go to the moon. It's something I'd love to do, but I can't be bothered with all the training beforehand. If I was invisible, I could just sneak on. Failing that, I'd walk around pinching bottoms and goosing girls. No really. I'm kidding. ..."
Would you ever move to LA? "Not at the moment. Although I do like it. It's always sunny and I always have fun there. I've made some really good friends in Hollywood. But the truth is, I'm a Londoner. I grew up here and I love it. It can get tiresome at times, but then I just escape. I have a country house in Carmarthenshire in south-west Wales. I love going there and relaxing. My dad is half-Welsh so I have family history in the area."
Where do you live now? "Camden, North London. I live with my sister and brother. We're surrounded by goths who live nearby."
Would you ever star in an advert? "I'm really good friends with Jasper Conran and I always wear his clothes. (Damian then opens his suit jacket to reveal a Jasper Conran label.) The cut is very elegant. I would model for him -- if he wanted me to, although I don't know whether he is stupid enough to ask. And obviously, money has something to do with it. But I'm not shy of walking down the catwalk. I've never endorsed a product. I hear stories of Robert Redford doing cigar ads in Japan and stuff like that, but no, not me."
You've worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company in the past -- are you a luvvie at heart? "Yes, I suppose I am. I do air-kissing and go to all the parties. I like to say, I "play" the room rather than "work" the room. There's nothing wrong with a good schmooze."
"I like to play the piano, but I'm really bad. I don't have lessons. I'm teaching myself. I don't have a grand piano, just a normal upright one at home."
What makes you cry? "I find it really difficult to cry. When I think about it, I don't feel the need to cry very often. I'm a pretty happy person. If I do feel upset or down, I'm more likely to go quiet. I'm the silent type."
How much do you spend on a haircut? "£40. I get it cut on Camden High Street. I'd never cut it myself. I am thinking of shaving my head, but am not sure whether it'd actually look that good."
Do you do your own washing? "Yes. I separate darks from whites myself. Who do you think does it? A cleaner? She does the ironing."
Have you ever bought anything from eBay? "Never. Although I have been on it. I donated a Band Of Brothers cap for a charity auction. I think it went for something like 42p."

SUNDAY MERCURY, 3/27/05:

"I always resented Tom [Hardy] for turning up on Band Of Brothers and getting the girl -- in fact, the only girl in a cast of hundreds of smelly men! I, on the other hand, spent eight months with my face squashed up against someone else's backside in one sodden trench after another. And it looks as if Tom might have got the girl again [in Colditz], damn his eyes."
"My favourite scenes in Colditz were the 'Boy's Own adventure' footage we shot in the Czech Republic -- in particular, doing my own fight stunts in a bar in Prague, chasing a moving train across a viaduct high in the beautiful Czech mountains and doing stunt falls with Tom as we escaped through the countryside. You know, only Tom Cruise and I out of all the actors currently working do all our own stunts!"

TV GUIDE (UK), 3/28/05:

"I like doing accents," he says. "I don't find it a hindrance. I'll pull the wool over someone's eyes with the accent, I'm sure."

GRAZIA, 3/28/05:

"I'd never move to LA for good -- I love Britain too much."

YOU, 4/17/05:

Your grooming secrets? "I wear mascara for work because my lashes are so fair, but with my red hair I can't carry off black lashes. Red hair runs in my family. I've never dyed mine, though. I do very little grooming, just plucking the odd nasal hair. I use Christian Dior or Armani cologne and moisturise with Johnson's Baby Lotion or Simple."
Do you watch what you eat? "I have no idea about carbs and calories. I often have lunch meetings in restaurants and I always have a starter and main course -- usually a pudding, too! If I've had a rough night, I'll make myself a bacon buttie for breakfast. I love sweet things like afternoon tea and toast with butter and jam."
Any vices? "I eat out and drink alcohol most nights; it's the curse of living in London. Although drinking at lunch time knocks me out, I still do it -- certain lunches are just meant to be boozy."
How do you keep in shape? "I play football every weekend and I love golf, tennis and skiing. I also cycle everywhere. I'm disciplined about working out if I'm in a role where I have to take my clothes off, but cardh as Jasper Conran, John Varvatos and Armani. And it's amazing how a really great shirt can transform your mood."

TELEGRAPH, 5/14/05:

On the 58th Cannes Film Festival: "I'm appearing alongside Penelope Cruz in Martha Fiennes's new film Chromophobia," he tells me. "It will be shown at the last-night gala, but I'm also meant to be doing business with my new production company, Picture Farm."
On the parties during the Festival: "Oh, I'm sure I'll be making my way to some of the parties," he adds. "Though I hear the best ones are outside Cannes."

INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE, 5/20/05:

Regarding the intense schedule of media interviews about the three films he is presenting at the festival, Damian Lewis jokes that he risks developing multiple-personality disorder: "I start out the morning like the sensitive lover I play in 'Brides,' by lunchtime I have become as emotionally arrested as my character in 'Chromophobia,' and by evening I am the muttering schizophrenic in 'Keane.'"

FESTIVAL-CANNES.FR (CANNES FILM FESTIVAL OFFICIAL SITE), 5/21/05:

"In the last twenty years, we in England have had two very strong seams in our cinema. One has been the gritty realism of Mike Leigh, Ken Loach and stories about working class heroes and then you have this heritage cinema. She [Chromophobia director Martha Fiennes] has brought these two worlds together in a film and the problem in British cinema is we haven't established a persona for our cinema, we haven't established a genre we can put out there to the world that's contemporary, exciting, challenging, and entertaining cinema. She's the first that I can remember to have done it so successfully."

CHROMOPHOBIA PRESS BOOKLET, CANNES FILM FESTIVAL EDITION, 5/05:

"It's great to be working with really talented people. In a perfect world you would always be working with the best people at what they do, because obviously it is more stimulating."

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, 6/17/05:

Getting it right in a movie like this is important to the people who have lived the real versions of war. Lewis, who played Captain Winters in "Band of Brothers," the series about the 101st Airborne in World War II, was recently approached by a soldier [while in Morocco filming The Situation]. "Captain Winters,'' he asked. "Well, if you like,'' said Lewis, who recounted the story to me. The man goes on to say that he was a Seabee (a naval engineer) working with Marines in southern Iraq last year, and though he thought he was there to work on reconstruction, the marines quickly handed him a rifle and reminded him that "this is combat." During their down time, the men would gather around computers to watch DVDs of "Band of Brothers" over and over, and while watching a sequence recreating the Battle of Bastogne, they came under a persistent insurgent mortar barrage. The soldier reached into his pocket and pulled out his dog-tags. "These kept me safe in Iraq, and I want you to have them.'' Lewis protested, "I'm just an actor." But the man put up a hand. "No, this is important to me. I want you to have this."

SUNDAY TIMES STYLE MAGAZINE, 6/26/05:

"I like that 1950s Cary Grant North by Northwest look, a slim cut," says the flame-haired fox. "My fall-back dating outfit is more understated. I wouldn't want to scare anyone off. If I'm going on a really smart date, it's jeans, shirt and jacket -- a bit eurotrashy. I always wear my shirt too unbuttoned. It's a weakness of mine. I'm vain, so I like to look all right when I'm going out. I try not to have too many mirrors in the house," he laughs, "because I tend to get stuck. Anyone who is the focus of attention is susceptible to that. I love being a redhead. Everyone should go out with a boy with red hair once -- we all want the orange cream in a box of chocolates. I can be spontaneous with the right person. I like to go on romantic holidays in Europe, driving through France or Italy in my silver Mazda MX5 sports car with the roof down. 'Dates' are to be avoided. You have to make it not seem like a date by starting at lunch or in the afternoon. I'd go to a gallery or go on a boat down the Thames: something fun, rather than sitting across a table. My dream woman is funny and intelligent. She also needs to have sparkly, smiling eyes. I would never impose a dress code on a woman, but I like Vivienne Westwood. Punk meets Moulin Rouge! -- that's sexy."

TELEGRAPH, 7/22/05:

People with ginger tresses are often subject to derision. But for carrot-topped actor Damian Lewis and strawberry-blonde model Olivia Inge, their distinctive hair colour has formed the basis of a new friendship. "We met at a party recently and bonded over the taunts we received as children," Inge told me at the Berkeley Square Ball on Tuesday night. "It turns out we were both nicknamed Ginger Snap at school. But I like to think it's made us stronger as a result." It certainly hasn't bred insecurities in Lewis, who styled his ginger locks into an enormous quiff on the night to impersonate Elvis Presley. "I sang some Elvis songs aboard Microsoft owner Paul Allen's yacht in May. Tonight's organisers had heard about that and asked if I would repeat the performance. I loved it -- and I'll keep the shades."

CHRISTIAN AID NEWS, SUMMER 2005:

What would you save if your house was on fire? "Guitar or piano. Probably the piano. Guitar would be easier."
What makes you cry? "My own indecision."
What are you going to give this Christmas? "A puppy. Hang on ..."
Which book or song do you most wish you'd written? "The Little Prince."
Who would you choose to be shipwrecked with? "A good listener."
If you could change one thing in the world, what would it be? "The US president."
Have you ever met an angel? "Only fallen ones. Usually around 3 am."
What miracle would you like to work? "To eradicate poverty."
What's made you laugh today? "Nothing. I've had one of those macabre, no-laugh days."
What's your favourite food? "Sticky sausages."
Who would you make a saint? "Bob Geldof."

TELEGRAPH, 8/13/05:

It looks like Damian Lewis has a rival in the ginger heart-throb stakes. Earlier this week, rubber-faced actor Mickey Rourke made the headlines when he half-inched someone's girlfriend at a nightclub and whisked her off to the Dorchester hotel. And Lewis thinks he knows the reason behind Rourke's revival. "He's dyed his hair red. So he'll be having the time of his life," he tells me. "It's not true that blondes have more fun." The Brit actor du jour is about to start filming The Storm Breaker with Rourke and Alicia Silverstone, but Rourke's new hair colour could be a cause for concern. "I can't believe it," Lewis mutters. "I won't be the only man on set with red hair."

LA WEEKLY, 9/9/05:

"Acting, at its best, is sort of meditative, actually. In discovering a character, you lose yourself."

LOS ANGELES TIMES, 9/16/05:

"I don't consider myself to be a method actor. But I like time to prepare and engage my imagination."

BBC, 10/20/05:

"In the pursuit of careers, men and women, nowadays particularly, have often blocked themselves off to committed relationships in pursuit of their careers or in pursuit of some spurious notion of independence and, in doing so, can harden themselves unwittingly; harden themselves more than they think they are to the idea of love and a relationship with someone else. Often it's very typical that it happens in the mid-thirties, and I'm coming into my mid-thirties and so it felt relevant."
"I think there's nothing more lovely than seeing friends of yours just become gooey with love...."
Damian, who received a Golden Globe nomination for his portrayal of Richard Winters in Band Of Brothers, enjoys the broad spectrum of his career, with no preference for film, TV or theatre. "Except that when I'm doing one, I wish I was doing the other," he laughs.
Damian's career has embraced a plethora of characters and he's adamant that he doesn't have an ideal role. "I like each role for different reasons," he explains. "I enjoy the challenge. In acting, there's something quite important about being asked to do roles. It's not something you might necessarily have thought of yourself but you're asked to meet the challenge in some way by a director or by a writer who thinks you'd be good. If you choose your own roles -- line them up -- I think you're in danger of limiting the stuff you do. It means that you have an idea of the way you would like to be seen, or you have an idea of the sort of role you would like to be playing. It's not an objective viewpoint and so I think that's a trap. There's something important, as an actor, about allowing yourself to be approached by people to do roles. People see different things in you."
The last time Damian starred in Much Ado was in 1998 at The Barbican -- and it's a period he'll never forget. "I was riding my motorbike home one night in the rain and the dark and a minicab pulled out from a side road," he remembers. "I went straight into the side of it and straight into the windscreen, and was out cold. I used to wear an open visor, just because I thought it looked cool, but that night I had my full face visor on and thank God, because I would have had to have reconstructive surgery on my face. I was bruised, amazingly broke nothing, but I had concussion." As luck would have it, the minicab passenger was a nurse from the Royal Free Hospital. "He'd been at a party and was a bit drunk so he'd taken a cab home," says Damian. "I woke up in the middle of the street in the recovery position with this guy holding my pulse incredibly hard, and he told me my pulse had disappeared a couple of times. I am hugely indebted to that guy although I never found out his name."

TELEGRAPH, 10/22/05:

At about 7:30 pm, Damian Lewis and I are ushered to a table in the restaurant at the National Theatre. Currently in rehearsal here for his role in Marianne Elliott's production of Ibsen's Pillars of the Community, he has not quite decided whether we should "do the whole dinner thing" or just have a drink. "I know it sounds horribly luvvie-ish," he says in his cocksure rasp, "but I'm so absolutely and utterly distracted by the play, that what I really need to do is go home and get an early night. ... Oh well, goddamit, maybe just one course," he relents as the waiter gestures to take away our cutlery. "A duck spring roll or a steak perhaps. Anyway, look, you choose away, why don't you, while I make this quick call, then I'm going to switch it off and be yours entirely."
Lewis's public-school charm -- he is an Old Etonian -- is legendary in the business. As the veteran theatre producer Thelma Holt put it when I told her I was seeing him: "Take a flak jacket, because, darling, that boy is dangerous."
"[Gary in An Unfinished Life was] hands down the most unattractive character I've ever played in my life."
"[Dreamcatcher] still makes my balls slightly disappear into my stomach when I watch it."
In order to research the role [in Keane], Lewis spent weeks visiting "clubhouses" in New Jersey for recovering schizophrenics and trawling around the Port Authority bus station to observe what it was like to be mentally ill and homeless. "I had a conversation with this one woman who told me she'd just come back from singing in a club and that her name was Tina," he recalls. "I said, 'Tina who?' She said, 'Tina Turner,' and started telling me how Ike was and how she had to get back home to him. I asked her where 'home' was and she told me it was one of the subway carriages. That sort of encapsulated for me how it could all be so searingly funny but painfully sad at the same time. The difficulty, I suppose, was getting close to these poor people and respecting them, too. ... But although the film is about schizophrenia, I see it more as a film about grief and loss, portraying how an event can happen in a very short time and change your life irreversibly." It is impossible not to draw a parallel here with Lewis's own life. Four years ago, soon after Band of Brothers aired, his mother, Charlotte, was killed in a car crash while holidaying in India. Lewis received the news, as did his brother Gareth and elder half-siblings, William and Jennifer (correction, Telegraph: her name is Amanda), in the middle of the night, when he was in bed. "There is," he says shortly, "something profound and complex about losing a parent, traumatic for anyone, I imagine, but made worse, possibly, if you don't have any time to prepare. ... But I like to hold on to what I think is the Buddhist attitude to death, where one leaves one's spirit or one's essence in places that one has been, so that, say, I might find you in a tree if we picnicked there one summer's day. So if I were there a year later I might feel you there. I don't know if that sounds like a bunch of hokum. ..."
Describing himself with typical self-effacing inaccuracy as a "norf London boy," Lewis was born and bred in the affluent environs of St. John's Wood, the son of Watcyn, a reinsurance broker, who married Charlotte (a descendant of the Bowaters printing dynasty) after her first husband, the father of William and Jennifer (correction, Telegraph: her name is Amanda), died.
He recalls how he and Gareth were forever doing plays for their parents behind the sofa. "One I remember in particular we did with an Iranian boy who lived across the road, about the life of a piece of chewing gum which kept travelling from one place to the next." And how being sent to boarding school at the age of seven "was one of the happiest times of my life, like being transported back to pre-industrial England, being on the corner of Ashdown forest, playing in the rhododendron bushes, inhaling the smell of cut grass and all that." Eton, he allows, was not quite as laidback and easy an experience, but one he enjoyed none the less, being "good enough at sport" and not exactly fraught with the worry of getting into university. As his mother had wisely told him, "If you want to chase girls, do sport and get a grad three, then don't bother. ..."
Lewis is adamant that Hollywood is by no means "the pinnacle," that as far as being considered for an Oscar nomination is concerned, "although I'm not for a moment suggesting I'm impervious to that kind of flattery," he doesn't necessarily consider that whole "award thing" a measure of success. "I mean, take Simon Russell Beale," he shrugs. "He never had a Hollywood career, never did any TV really, and look at him."
On the other hand he seems meticulous about doing what he wants to do, as opposed to what other people want him to do -- famously turning down the role of the baddie in Die Another Day, because, as he put it at the time, "you can be Bond, or you can be the Bond girl, but you can't be anything in between."
Significantly, alongside his brother Gareth and two other partners, he has put together a production company, Picture Farm, which has just received funding for its first film, The Baker (Lewis will both star and co-produce).
"There's no doubt I am ambitious," he explains, enunciating each word carefully, "but if anything, I am ambitious for choice, because choice gives you elements of control. One should not seek total control because then one would never be happy, but trying to achieve an element of it is, I think, a good and healthy thing. And ambition is a word, in my opinion, that is often used much too pejoratively."
As for that national characteristic of self-effacement, he thinks we Brits seriously need to get over it. Despite being an offender himself (almost by default more than anything else), he believes, like an American, that modesty doesn't do anyone any favours. As he recently told an interviewer, he considers himself "an anomaly among actors because I like myself. Like myself?" Lewis cries with mock indignation, "Er. Correction. Who loves himself. No, no, I'm joking. Note to self: irony does not work in print."
"Look, put simply, I slightly resist the idea of the tortured artist, the self-effacing, dysfunctional hermit type who only finds expression in front of an audience, under the spotlight, on a stage. I know people who feed off that in order to feel whole and I don't want to be one of them, because by nature I'm not bashful or shy."
"Although I feel more happy, settled, more calm, more fulfilled here at the National than I have done for years, and film and TV are, in a way, a happy, happy diversion for me, they do bring with them a certain degree of recognition, certain perks and trappings, which I'm much too shallow not to enjoy."
He is very flattered, for example, by the invitation from his friend the fashion designer Jasper Conran to model for him (not that he has said yes -- "let's say the question's been mooted"), as he is by all the parties he gets invited to. "What can I say, I accept invitations and I enjoy going out ... perhaps, it has to be said, a bit too much sometimes."
"I very much respect the institution of marriage," he goes on in his mildly pontificating way, "and the only way to maintain a long-term relationship with someone, in my view, is simply to continue to find them delightful. It's not that painful, soul-searching love you might have had at 21 in some crappy six-month relationship, it's about there being the potential for that moment when you steal a glance at that person and suddenly find it, well, delightful -- the way they look out of the window ... or indeed, wash themselves in the shower. I think the reason people have affairs is because they're trying to recreate that six-month honeymoon period. Well how about creating that with just the one person? It must be possible, if you're disciplined. Too much choice, you see, that's the killer for a lot of people. I think that certainly is the killer for me. ..."
It is late and Lewis does suddenly look very tired, that pale, thin skin almost blue-tinged under this unforgiving foyer light. Would I like it if he got me a taxi at the stage door (he himself is going to bike back to his flat in Camden)? Although to be honest, he points out, it's just as easy to get one on Waterloo Bridge. The off he whizzes into the clear autumnal night, looking, it suddenly strikes me, like a ballet dancer with that sinewy, straight-backed frame and dainty, slightly out-turned feet.

THIS IS LONDON, 10/25/05:

Damian Lewis is feeling giddy. "I've always romanticised the theatre," he says excitedly, traces of make-up from a recent rehearsal still visible around his eyes. For someone better known for playing action roles on TV, it's a surprising confession. But Lewis truly means it. "When I was a student at Guildhall, stoned, wearing too much black and playing guitar, I would see actors such as Simon Russell Beale and Ralph Fiennes at the Barbican and think how cool it would be to be on that stage and be able to shout like that. I've always romanticised the South Bank too. And here I am, playing the lead. I'm more excited about this than about anything I've done in years."
On his character Karsten Bernick in Pillars of the Community: "He is exceptionally human. It's remarkable how rarely we meet someone who is unequivocally honest. We all establish new truths for ourselves every day so that we can get through and convince ourselves we are good people. Yet because Bernick is so driven and has manifested so much power for himself, there's also a palpable dishonesty there. Although if that sounds boring, I should remind you that there are also several whopping love stories."
"There's a lot to be said for playing evil with complete relish or good with complete relish but I haven't played a character like that for some time because I'm interested in that conflict within people. I've noticed how me and my friends spent our early twenties being very idealistic and principled, and how that's been diluted over time. Yet I've also noticed how those people, and I include myself, have become more understanding and sympathetic. That's the irony, and that's partly what I've been trying to find in Bernick."
Lewis is not a disingenuous man. "I know full well why I'm here," he says wryly. "Because of the telly." As an actor who spent his childhood in thrall to the dazzle of the American musicals his father used to take him to in the school holidays, and who admits to having nurtured a snobbish disdain for TV, he finds a certain irony in the fact that he has become famous through his appearances on the box. Band Of Brothers launched him -- Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg's £120 million TV spectacular for which he was quietly selected in London to play Major Winters while an auditioning frenzy raged in America. Prior to that, he spent his formative years with the RSC. Yet, while many TV actors see a return to theatre as a chance to hone their craft, Lewis believes TV has made him a much better actor. "Before, I would always do 'impressive acting.' As a natural show-off, I was always more aware of the audience than I should have been. I've always been told I have presence, so I would simply stand there and have lots of presence. But TV and film teach you nuance and detail. Partly because I'm less self-involved than I used to be, I realise that everyone, certainly in this particular case, is shit hot, and I've actually got to pull my socks up."

EVENING STANDARD MAGAZINE, 10/28/05:

Where do you live and why? "Camden. I've always liked this part of London. I remember, when I was younger, I used to make it along to the Electric Ballroom in Camden High Street on a Friday night and jump up and down to the rock music."
How long have you lived there? "I've lived in North London all my life. I grew up in St. John's Wood, although I was at boarding school a lot of the time. Afterwards, I returned to London to study at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. I was at Guildhall at the same time as Joseph Fiennes, Ewan McGregor and Jude Law."
What was the last play you saw in London and did you enjoy it? "As You Like It at Wyndhams Theatre with my girlfriend Helen McCrory and Sienna Miller. Helen's performance as Rosalind was quite stunning -- I loved it."
What have been your most memorable London meals? "Long Sunday lunches in great pubs with good wine and good friends. I also like eating at The Wolseley on Piccadilly. I can't really tell if I'm in a Viennese brasserie or a car showroom -- but it's very grand."
What do you miss most when you're out of London? "The magnificent views of the city when you're standing on the top of Primrose Hill or from Waterloo Bridge -- they're breathtaking."
What is your life philosophy? "Be brave. Regret nothing."
What items are in your winter wardrobe? "Long johns and woolly socks -- especially if it's going to get as cold as everyone is predicting this winter."
Which aftershave do you wear? "Acqua di Gio by Giorgio Armani or something by Christian Dior."
What are your current projects? "I'm currently rehearsing for a Henrik Ibsen play at the National Theatre called Pillars Of The Community, which opens on 1 November. Then I've got Much Ado About Nothing, which is on BBC One, also on 1 November. And there's my film Keane which is being screened at the London Film Festival. I play a man struggling to come to terms with the disappearance of his six-year-old daughter."
What were the last books you bought? "The Spanish Game by Charles Cumming, a spy story, and an introduction to the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. I get most of my books from Charing Cross Road."
Who is in your secret address book? "Paradise Cleaners, the flower stall, the Odeon cinema and Tupelo Honey restaurant for its chicken pie -- all on Parkway in Camden. I used to love flicking through books in Regent Bookshop, also on Parkway, but sadly it's now closed."
What advice would you give to a tourist? "Bring a brolly with you."
What is your earliest London memory? "Solving crimes along Abbey Road with my brother Gareth on our Grifter bikes."
What do you listen to on your iPod as you travel around London? "In a perfect world I would always be bicycling through Bloomsbury just as my iPod shuffled to Artie Shaw."
What was the last CD you bought? "Damian Marley's Welcome To Jamrock. It's a reggae album by the son of Bob Marley."
Where were the last three places you went on holiday? "My family house in Wales, then Norfolk and before that Morocco."
What would you do if you were Mayor for the day? "Hand out bicycles, free, to everyone."

THE GUARDIAN, 10/29/05:

What is your idea of perfect happiness? "Autumn, long walk, fire, bottle of red."
What is your greatest fear? "Death."
Which living person do you most admire? "Roger Federer -- unearthly talent combined with killer instinct."
What has been your most embarrassing moment? "Not appropriate to mention here. I was 15 and had only one thing on my mind. ..."
What makes you depressed? "Terrorism."
What is your favourite smell? "Welsh air."
What is your most treasured possession? "A photograph of my mum."
What is your most unappealing habit? "Hypocrisy."
What is your favourite word? "'Snazzy.'"
Radiator or airconditioning? "Radiator."
Cat or dog? "Dog."
Is it better to give or to receive? "Give."
What is your guiltiest pleasure? "Living."
Which words or phrases do you most overuse? "'I'm not going to do that again. ...'"
What has been your biggest disappointment? "That I'm not a world-dominating sportsman of some kind."
What is your greatest regret? "That my mum died."
When and where were you happiest? "At 12, on the edge of Ashdown Forest, pinging golf balls at the cricket pavilion at sunset in my pyjamas."
Have you ever had a same-sex experience? "Do I count?"
What single thing would improve the quality of your life? "Servants."
What song would you like played at your funeral? "Burning Love, by Elvis."
What is the most important lesson life has taught you? "You only get out what you put in."

THE INDEPENDENT, 10/30/05:

I believe ... "Poise is very important, and by that I mean the quality in people that allows them to act in the right way under duress. I think that's hugely attractive, more so than looks or conventional charm. It also be quite daunting and overwhelming to meet someone with poise."
I believe ... "That in life you get out what you put in. I don't believe in direct spiritual retribution of any kind. I think it works in more subtle ways. If you put in bad things, one's soul or spiritual well-being will become eroded or rotten. The type of person you become and the quality of life you lead, is less inherently good than if you were contributing in a productive way."
I believe ... "Eton doesn't have either the cachet or the relevance it used to have. If anything, people find it faintly amusing. I've been cited as an old Etonian along with David Cameron, but I don't think it carries the same sort of stigma as it used to. Yes, you've got to have the money and brain power to go there, so it is education by selection, but I don't think people are quite as horrified by the idea of the ruling toffs any more. Because the ruling toffs have been integrated so much into the very middle- class professions. Like acting."
I believe ... "Good manners matter hugely. My mother taught me to be thoughtful and kind. They're the words I heard more than any other. It might sound smarmy but I enjoy nothing more than allowing a woman of an older generation through the door first, or getting up and offering her a seat. I know that it's appreciated. And I always cross the street late at night if I sense my presence is making a woman nervous. It's awful to think you're wandering along in your own world and making someone else nervous."
I believe ... "Men and women are equal but different. When I and my friends were trying to establish ourselves as young men in the early Nineties, I remember this overwhelming sense that one had to be feminine, not act effeminately, but have feminine sensibilities, be sensitive to female preoccupations. We were all trying too hard to find out how to be 'new men'. Meanwhile feminism was going through what many feminists would agree was a bit of a wrong turning " there was this idea that you had to behave like a man and be a ball-breaker to be empowered. Whereas today I think women realise they can use their own femininity, their own womanliness even, in a very powerful way."
I believe ... "That it's better to be a lion for a day than a mouse for life."
I believe ... "In good management rather than ideology because I think ideology is all but dead in this country, which is a slightly depressing."
I believe ... "That there should be more cycle lanes in London. But what's happened to the white dog poo? Has anyone noticed? It's completely disappeared."
I believe ... "Great theatre can be greater than great film, because of the effect a piece of art can have if you feel that in some way you have contributed to it. Cinema is naturally more passive. The fun of theatre is largely down to how much the audience takes part. You sit and watch in the dark, but every silence, every stillness, every laugh or fidget of yours contributes to the evening. That's why people often feel betrayed by bad plays, because we feel we have been asked to invest in some way."
I believe ... "Liverpool will win the Champions' League again this year."
I believe ... "Attending boarding school at an early age, you learn to cope very quickly with your environment. That can create extraordinary social dexterity and confidence; it can create leaders, people capable of tremendous generosity to others, but a by-product is that, you repress more than your fair share of emotional life. As an actor, I respond to that idea of people who are seemingly in control... but then crack later."
I believe ... "We establish new truths for ourselves daily to make life liveable."
I believe ... "The treatment of people with red hair is inexplicable. Let's not even go there, it's so boring. I've tried to explain it cogently, rationally and objectively, but every time I do I just feed the argument. I don't know where it all comes from, but it certainly exists. I've promised myself to look into the history of it. But until then, I've sworn not to say any more on the subject."

FACTORY, AUTUMN 2005:

"I went through a lot of pantomime when I was young -- I mostly wanted to be Widow Twanky."
"I think it's interesting to play people who are conflicted because I think most of us are all the time, or for a good part of our lives, or at least I've felt conflicted. It's true that if an actor seems to be able to play a baddie well, for example, or a tortured soul, those portrayals seem to register very strongly with an audience and the public. You might play five sweet comedic roles that don't grab people in quite the same way than if you played a tortured soul successfully. So Soames Forsyte, the character I played recently on TV, was definitely tortured, conflicted, unhappy, jealous, repressed."
"... One is always biased towards one's own character because you support them and believe in them, otherwise there is no way you can play them credibly without judging them. You have to just absolutely understand in them, believe in them and, in many respects, believe them to be right. Then it's just a question of how persuasively, powerfully you put across your character's argument."
"My father loves theatre and it's totally down to him that I wanted to be an actor because every holiday he would take the family on a trip to the West End. My father lived in Chicago in the 1960s for five years so he loves all the song and dance men and women and musicals. So I went with him to see a lot of those classic musicals. Guys 'n Dolls, 42nd Street and also straight theatre and I just got a huge buzz out of it. Just being in the theatre as a child -- the excitement and anticipation before a curtain goes down -- there's always a sense of panic about getting to your seat in time. 'Oh I'll just go for a pee quickly, grab a bag of peanuts'. I think there is great drama just being in the audience; being in a live theatre you can't help but feel part of it. If you shift in your seat, you think 'Oh my God, can they hear me, see me?' You feel like you are contributing to the evening. So that was it. It was really just being a child and being taken to the theatre. Loving it and then doing theatre at all my schools from the age of eight and then at 16 deciding I want to do this professionally."
"In November, I'll probably make a trip to Africa with Christian Aid whom I work with; I'm an ambassador for them. In spite of its title, it's a non-denominational organisation and I'm very involved with them in fair trade and increasing people's awareness in fair trade."
[Siobhan Hewlett's] Ralph Lauren Collection outfit [for the Factory photo shoot with Damian] got our leading man all in a fluster, "Leather just makes me want to be naughty". Down boy. Down.

BBC, OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 2005:

"I think there are wonderful parallels [in Much Ado About Nothing] with modern living -- the way people have become. In the pursuit of careers, men and women, nowadays particularly, have often blocked themselves off to committed relationships in pursuit of their careers or in pursuit of some spurious notion of independence and, in doing so, can harden themselves unwittingly; harden themselves more than they think they are to the idea of love and a relationship with someone else. Often it's very typical that it happens in the mid-thirties, and I'm coming into my mid-thirties and so it felt relevant."
" I think there's nothing more lovely than seeing friends of yours just become gooey with love ...."

THE TIMES, 11/1/05:

"At drama school we would sit around and talk about how we were going to shake everything up, be the new generation. This is why I'm so giddy. Do you ever get a projected nostalgia because you're nostalgic about the time you're having now? That's how I feel."
"When you first have some success, people want to know your ideas on things because it makes good copy. I was rather fascinated in my own ideas because I had never been asked so directly to voice them. Initially that was sort of interesting, now I find myself slightly tedious and realise that I will never be quite as bright and interesting as I always hoped I was sounding. It was just a navel-gazing exercise."
"I find it very difficult to create enough calm space around my brain to sit down and read. I've always felt guilty about sitting down and reading in the middle of a week. So I tend to wait for holidays where there's real space. In the countryside and in my house in Wales."
"A friend said to me the other day that maybe I shouldn't go to quite so many parties. I am photographed out quite a lot and he was concerned for my integrity as an actor. But I feel secure with the work I do so I think I'll keep going to parties."
"My trademark dish is a shepherd's pie which has sultanas in it. My friend came round and said, 'actually you are right about the sultanas. They're not bad at all because I can't taste them.'"
"I have a romantic view of solitude and am constantly thinking that I would love to go to a bolt hole in the country and spend a week on my own. But I've done it and after about two days started to feel very sorry for myself; melancholy and restless, not calm at all. Two days on my own is a long time."
"Actually, I'm not really telling the truth. I backpacked around Jordan and Egypt on my own for three weeks two years ago and I used to go busking in the South of France in the summer holidays. A lot of France wanted Supertramp."
"As a teenager, I couldn't walk past a mirror without inspecting myself. I don't know where it came from. Like Narcissus gazing adoringly at his reflection in the pool, except that I wasn't gazing adoringly."
"It didn't happen so much at home. That's not true. We had a mirror in the hallway at the bottom of the stairs so I was always getting caught."
"I don't have a mirror in my house now. Well, I have a mirror in the bathroom but no mirror in the hallway or the conventional places. Actually, earlier this year I did get a full-length mirror inside my cupboard, but it's closed."
"Is 'ginger heart-throb' a contradiction in terms? I think that's hugely patronising. Of course it isn't."
"In the Ibsen play I'm doing I'm playing a man who has vaulting ambition, to quote Macbeth. As an actor one always tries to find the good in a character. This guy tries to kill his brother-in-law. It's indefensible really, but on some level he's just trying to do the right thing."
"Did I like it when I was sent 40 pairs of knickers in the post? Well, it was novel. They were actually sent by a group of women who did it with a huge sense of humour and irony. They weren't bonkers."
"I generally believe in clean surfaces. No Flash, just a good J-Cloth, once across and stick it in the sink."
"My most prized possessions are photographs of my mother on the mantelpiece. The thing I most remember my mum telling me is to be thoughtful towards others."
"We were always getting smacked on the bum as children. It's good. I'll probably smack my children and risk the consequences."
"At times I can be desperately shallow. I suppose it's a sort of laziness."
"My desk will pile up, pile up, pile up and I know there is one thing on the desk that has a deadline among all the paper, but for some reason that one thing becomes the whole desk and for some reason I won't get to that one little thing until I've attacked the whole desk and then that becomes a big issue because I know it's going to take an afternoon to do it and I don't have an afternoon and actually the sensible and intelligent thing to do is to locate the one thing that is actually causing me all the stress and deal with it. That's what causes me stress."
"The other thing my mother always said is that only boring people are bored. That was my mum's great mantra. I can honestly say to you that I've never been bored."
"The fact that I went to Eton isn't interesting to me. I kept quiet about it for a long time because I was very aware of stereotyping and I thought it would influence the sort of parts I got."
"The performances that have influenced me most were, Dominic West, age 17, as a brilliant Hamlet in a school production. Also Michael Gambon in View From a Bridge."
"I used to be late for everything, much less so now. What does it mean if someone is always late? It means that they are fearful of commitment, of committing to a moment and therefore being held accountable in any way. No, I've never been in therapy. Am I single? No, and I'm stopping that question right there. Am I gay? No, but it would easier to be."

TV CHOICE, 11/5/05:

"I find the theatre very romantic -- settling down in your seats and waiting for the lights to go down."
"I wasn't allowed to watch TV as a kid. We were told to read a book instead!"

TV GUIDE (UK), 11/5/05:

"You really have to love big-screen film-making, or just love seeing yourself on a 40 ft screen in a 1,000 seater cinema somewhere -- which does have its draw! But it can sometimes fell as if you spend months of your life sitting in your trailer, waiting to be called out to do one line. I'd rather be doing a play or great telly."

TV TIMES, 11/5/05:

"I don't think anyone should ever think they're too good for telly. The idea that bigger is better is not necessarily true. I'm happy to mix it up. I'm a very lucky boy."
"I don't believe myself to be really famous, and that's not a false modesty. My view is that if you ignore your publicity you won't notice it. It just interferes with what one really wants to do, which is to act. I love acting."
"I love playing sport. To me, spending time with Colin Montgomerie or Mark O'Meara is more interesting than spending it with actors."
"I've been lucky to have had so many fantastic jobs."

TV QUICK, 11/5/05:

The actor was 12 when he won a prize for his performance as Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream. But his love of acting and the theatre came from family outings to see musicals like Guys And Dolls and 42nd Street. "I still find the theatre very romantic," he says. "Settling down in your seats and waiting for the lights to go down -- it's all extremely exciting." Although Damian initially found success on stage, it took him several years to break into TV. After more than one unsuccessful audition he began to wonder if he would ever make it. "That's when I had my biggest doubts in my career. I didn't find it easy auditioning in front of TV cameras. I found them very intrusive," he admits. "I thought I was going to be one of those stage actors who wouldn't do any TV. I did feel disheartened. Then Warriors came along. I remember thinking, 'I did my best. If I don't get this, I'll slit my wrists." Happily, he landed a part in the BBC drama, alongside Matthew Macfadyen and Ioan Gruffudd. "It's the one time I've given flowers to my agent," he says. "Now being in front of the camera feels totally natural."
For all his love of the stage, Damian admits there have been "giddy" Hollywood moments -- like when he was nominated as best actor at the Golden Globes for Band Of Brothers. "It was my first bona fide Hollywood red-carpet moment, and it was full of people hugging each other, jumping up and down, and saying, "Hello darling!" he recalls.

THEATREGOER, 11/05:

"I feel giddy with excitement being here [at the Lyttleton] now [for Pillars Of The Community. It reminds me of being back at drama school. I would sit around with friends, and theatre was very much our reference, not film or television. Acting was going to be about going to the RSC or the National and playing leading roles there. One always imagines oneself in the leading role, of course, when you're a student -- and that you're going to transform the theatre!"
"When Jonathan asked me [to play Laertes in Hamlet], I looked down my nose at him very grandly and said, "I couldn't possibly play Laertes, I've just played the Dane!" I was then out of work for four months, and rang up and asked if Laertes was still available. He said he'd been waiting for my call."
"I have to say that I didn't much enjoy the rehearsals [for Hamlet] to begin with. Actors tend to be possessive of the roles they've played and I didn't much like Ralph reciting Hamlet's lines. One day, we were rehearsing the graveyard scene where Hamlet and Laertes square up against each other, and Jonathan said "from the top go!" and I totally involuntarily launched into Hamlet's lines! I'm not quick to blush, but I melted. [Going with the play to Broadway] was a very interesting lesson in success through association rather than for yourself."
"There are points in a career which are turning points, and I remember very clearly that this [signing up for two years with the Royal Shakespeare Company after going to New York with Hamlet] was one. I felt I'd tangibly developed as an actor, something had dropped in me and I'd become more still. The crap to some extent had evaporated -- I don't say for a moment that it has all disappeared -- but I'd become better."
"I was not good at camera interviews -- I found it intrusive and alien and I became very distracted around it, and gave very flappy and unfocused auditions. It wasn't at all natural for me. I thought that maybe I'll just be one of those theatre actors who aren't suited to camera."
"I was very taken with this new world [of Hollywood movies] I was introduced to. It was new and fun and exciting, but then I started to think, am I never going to go back on stage?"
"He [Jeffrey Archer] came and saw a show I was in [at Eton]. He summoned me afterwards and said what a wonderful performance I gave. [More recently, when I approached Archer one night after the film Jeffrey Archer -- The Truth was broadcast] he blanked me -- he either had no idea who I was or he knew exactly who I was."
"I do seem to enjoy playing roles that often tread a thin ethical line. The conflict that must be presented to one if one lives one's life like that is eternally interesting in drama. [Bernick] is sometimes a good man, but also motivated hugely by self-interest. This play deals with sleaze at the highest level, American imperialism, the power of newspapers, the idea of capitalism in the name of progress versus provincialism in the name of protecting things that are honest and simple. [It's also] and you'll just have to trust me, a suspense thriller, with a surprising amount of comedy."

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