Damian's Dominion: The Damian Lewis Digest

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

THE INDEPENDENT, 01/08/08:

McCrory and Lewis seem as well grounded as it is possible to be when you're one half of a famous couple who divide their time between north London and Los Angeles. There are flourishes of luvviness -- "darlings" and enthusiastic swearing with a cut-glass accent -- yet they are clearly devoted to each other. He accompanies her to our meeting at a Soho restaurant and settles her and their tiny baby son into a corner table before politely disappearing.

PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE, 01/14/08:

"When we were smaller, my brother and I had a pretty expansive fantasy life. We had two bikes, very '70s bikes, at least in London, called Grifters. We invented two characters for ourselves called Bob and Charlie, and we'd go up and down the street and all around the neighborhood solving crimes. That's what we did. We also had a couple of other alter egos called Pete and Dave. We were called Damian and Gareth. I think we were looking for just very plain names."
"I was directed by my younger brother [Gareth, in The Baker], which was a great experience actually. All things considered, it went pretty smoothly. I don't like to take anything too seriously."
"I went to boarding schools at a very early age -- the age of 8 -- so in some ways have been institutionalized really for 10 years of my life, technically speaking. I suppose mentally and emotionally institutionalized, as well. You are guided by those experiences. ... My elder brother had already gone, and it was made very clear to me what it was I was going into. I was all up for it. I really wanted to go. They give you a lot of recreational time when you go to a boarding school. You learn at an early age to get on without your parents' support. You become very adept for the rest of your life at dealing with situations and knowing how to negotiate difficult times, different scenarios. Probably there is a cost. A toughening up of an 8-year-old. You probably do push down a whole load of natural emotions."
"I think it's a different time now. I think my children won't go to boarding school at 8. I wouldn't mind sending them at 12 or 13. It's a different climate now. A lot of those schools have become places for parents who work abroad and want to have their children at an English school but can't be there all the time."
On his flawless American accent: "My cultural heritage, if you like, is so pervaded by American pop culture. I grew up on Kojak and Colombo and Starsky and Hutch, the Rockford Files and Magnum all those things. Also our family ... had cousins in Connecticut, so we would go on holiday. We used to do summer holidays up in Portland, Maine, actually. So I've always kind of felt pretty attached to America. Now that I'm doing this show, I stay in an American accent all day long just because it would be harder to switch in and out. I find that I've developed an American persona now. I got involved in a huge argument with someone the other day and usually when you are angry or when you are drunk you go back to your own accent. I found myself having this great fight all in an American accent without thinking twice about it. I thought, 'I wonder if this guy knows I'm English?' He's definitely going to hit me if he hears me."
"I think you can only, as an actor, be an interpreter for what's written. When you are doing your job well, you hopefully heighten what's on the page."

THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE, 02/17/08:

Damian: "I was so confrontational as a child, my mother took me to the family doctor and said: 'It's either him or me. One of us has got to go.' I just remember feeling fretful -- she found me impossible. If I was challenged, I felt I was being backed into a corner, metaphorically and sometimes physically. Gareth was a far cleverer child than I was. Less emotionally direct. He was much better at nodding, saying yes, then sliding off in his own direction. I remember one fight -- I was about 10 and he was eight -- when I had been particularly pedantic and annoying. Suddenly he started pummelling me with his fists, so I whacked him and he went down like a sack of potatoes, screaming his head off. Mum appeared and saw little Gareth, crumpled in a heap, wailing, but with one eye open, as always, to see what the reaction would be. She gave me this almighty clout around my head, the only time she ever hit me, and I ran down Abbey Road, saying I was never coming back. Afterwards I expected her to take me in her arms and say she was sorry. Instead she sat me down and gave me a right talking to. She'd had enough, I suppose."
Damian: "We're a strong, loud, intelligent, opinionated family. The Sunday-lunch table was always an epicentre of activity, where everyone was encouraged to talk and air their ideas. Because we were away at boarding school a lot of the time, there was a lot of questioning when we came home. Information and emotional responses were constantly demanded of us. Gareth was into gadgets and fads, which never lasted longer than a few months. I remember him saying at one point: 'I want to be a lawyer.' And my parents, in a very loving way, asked him to substantiate what he'd said -- I think they actually used that word. Suddenly, Gareth was expected to give weight to this rather transient thought, and he resented that. He felt he'd rather not say anything than have to explain himself. It was the same when we went to a play or a movie. We'd all sit around afterwards discussing what we thought the themes were, and Gareth would go: 'Why do we have to look for the meaning in everything? Can't we just enjoy it?' I think he found it all a bit tiring."
Damian: "Mum always wanted to know how we were and what we were feeling. It was quite a complex relationship, and Gareth slightly withdrew from that. If you're the fourth child of two very dynamic parents, maybe it's easier not to compete."
Damian: "Our mother was an incredibly strong woman, extremely opinionated, quite controlling, but hugely loving and giving, and at times very needy of love. She was sort of all-encompassing and a very dominant figure in our lives. I think Gareth's relationship with her eventually became less intense, a bit simpler, whereas mine was more immature. I still fought with her over everything. What I regret most about Mum dying [in a car crash in 2001] is not fully realising a friendship with her."
Damian: "When Gareth is sitting around a table in a pub with friends, he naturally takes centre stage, but it's not something he consciously seeks. He's incredibly entertaining and amusing, but there's a softness about him and a quietness, which means he doesn't impose himself. Gareth and I have got closer and closer as we've got older. It's like that moment when you first see your parents as real people and have to decide whether you like them or not. It's quite daunting. For a long time I thought we were much more similar than Gareth thought we were. He's been a bit more perceptive than I have. I don't think I'd stopped and thought about quite how many resentments he'd built up over the years. If you're the youngest of a big, innately ambitious family, you inherit so much tradition, it's almost expected that you fall in line. For a long time, Gareth just didn't want to. He felt different and he saw the world a bit differently. He was a bit more of a maverick, less clubbable than the rest of us, and not so easily drawn into the group. I'd always thought, without examining it too much: 'We're great mates and we've always got on.' But it's become apparent from things Gareth has said over the last few years that he's wanted to say: 'Yeah, we do get on, but let me tell you, there have been times when I've felt incredibly distanced from the family and you and your achievements.'"
Damian: "I feel hugely protective of Gareth -- I think I always have -- and very nurturing of him. We shared a flat when I was filming Band of Brothers, and every day he'd get up and write, which must have been incredibly hard. Confidence is related to your recent successes, and if you're not published or produced it's really difficult to maintain a sense of entitlement. When The Baker was finally made, he thrived. As a director he was humble and responsive and he listened, and the set was a very happy place. Before I married, he made it clear that he doesn't have the same nostalgic, sentimental attachments that I have, because he has his own family now. I understand that, but I think Gareth has a habit of resisting family gatherings, then regretting it. I think he's beginning to realise that, okay, we are loud and opinionated, and we do all talk over each other. But we're also a really nice, fully formed, functional family."
Gareth: "Damian was a bit of a golden boy at school. He was in a different house from me, so we didn't see that much of each other, but I liked to think he was looking out for me. At home we were great mates, with a tendency to violence. We used to ride round on our Grifter bikes, solving mysteries. We adopted these personae -- we were Poncherello and Baker from the California Highway Patrol, or we were Bob and Charlie, or Pete and Dave, depending on how we felt. Ultimately he had the final say, by virtue of the fact that he could punch me up if I didn't do what he said. We had some pretty ferocious fights. Like most boys, there were no boundaries, we really used to go for it. At that point I was the actor -- I knew how to get him into trouble. He'd give me a nudge, I'd fall to the ground screaming, and Mum would come racing out saying: 'What have you done to your little brother?'"
Gareth: "We were a very tightknit family, and when we were home from school there were a lot of big, noisy lunches, with everyone talking, not a lot of listening. And it's still like that. My wife finds it quite difficult. If you like to have a two-way conversation, you're a bit stuck, really. As a child, you were just waiting for the last person to shut up so you could have your say. Damian was very combative and he was always in the thick of it. I'd get sulky and moan that I couldn't get a word in edgeways. Even now, if I'm sitting round a lunch table with another family and there's a silence, I feel deeply uncomfortable and get prickly heat all up my neck, because in our house that would never happen."
Gareth: "Damian went to Guildhall and I went to Edinburgh [University], and we kind of reconnected when I came down to London and we shared a flat in Kilburn. But we didn't really know each other as adults, and it was a bit weird to begin with. We had all that history, but we hadn't really crossed paths for six years. Damian's days were spent lounging round in his dressing gown, getting ready to go to the theatre in the evening, and mine were spent doing a range of crappy jobs. I worked in telesales and bars, constantly having ideas but never settling on one. I travelled a lot. I felt I needed to get away from the family to be my own person, and I'd make for the border at the drop of a hat. Damian was becoming successful quite quickly. He was 23 when he did Hamlet in Regent's Park. I've always loved being part of that success, you know, going to the shows and saying: 'Yeah, that's my brother.' But there was a moment when I thought: 'Why have I gone into an area of work where I'm going to end up being unfavourably compared?' Writing is something that doesn't come easily to me. I'm naturally gregarious, and it took a few years to grasp that my future was going to involve spending a lot of time in a room on my own. Damian never had that struggle, as far as I can tell. He's had six or seven months out of work, but other than that it's been pretty constant. It kind of helped me, actually, because with everyone focused on Damian being starry I could slip under the radar and quietly get on with my own thing. I was working in a pub when I got a call from a production company who wanted to option The Baker, and I said: 'Guys, I quit.' I really regretted that because I needed the money. It took four months to get a meeting, and then they wanted rewrites. It was another six years before the film finally got made. I was an ingénu. I knew nothing."
Gareth: "Having lived together for three years and rebonded, getting on set with Damian was like playing again. I'd come over to give him a note after a take, and he'd practically know what I was going to say. He knows when I'm not happy and I can tell by looking at him when he's about to lose it. But it was a tantrum-free set. We shared quarters in a converted monastery in the Wye valley, and every night one of us would be cooking up pasta and sticking the rushes on. We didn't even pay him -- well, a fraction of his market value."
Gareth: "Damian spends a lot of time in LA. Up until now his world has been quite orderly and glamorous, but I don't think you can be that glamorous when you've got kids. It's 'Welcome to milk and vomit and no sleep,' and I've watched him slowly crumble. I went through it all before him -- I sent him a script I wrote just after my last daughter was born, and he said: 'Yeah, it starts off okay, then it all gets a bit surreal.' It's a bit of a bind trying to be funny on three hours' sleep."
Gareth: "On some level, Damian and I have become much closer. Not in a way that we ever talk about, but he definitely has it in mind to look after me. I'm only realising now that he's had my interests somewhere in mind for a long time, even if it's just generally wondering what he can do to help. I'm just the spoilt, selfish little brother who thinks only about himself. It's a stereotype, isn't it? But maybe it's one I fit into slightly better than I thought."

MARIE CLAIRE (UK), 02/25/08:

"I didn't know quite what to expect [working with my brother Gareth when he directed The Baker]. I suppose we were quite polite and very respectful of each other. Sweetly, we were also quite loving towards each other. Probably, if we did it again, we might be more frank. We might just say. 'That doesn't work', rather than be respectful of the fact that we're working with each other."
"We do [have Welsh roots], slightly by proxy. Dad is Welsh but born in London. His parents were Welsh and his Mum was a Welsh speaker. But Dad is very attached to his Welsh roots. He doesn't speak five words of Welsh, and can barely get through the National Anthem in Welsh - but he's very attached to it."
"I was quite hijacked by the work [when filming Life in Los Angeles]. My family were there and we had always planned to go out there together. When we made the decision to go out we had one child, then we got pregnant again, and it slightly changed the landscape. So Helen came out pregnant, which meant she was out there being a pregnant mum, rather than enjoying the possibility of getting work. So it was tough for her. I was at work 15, 16 hours a day at times. They don't know when to stop working. It's slightly brutalising. There's something a little bit sinister about it. It's rather mind controlling."

THE INDEPENDENT, 02/26/08:

"We've actually had a ball working together. Maybe at the end of each working day, the Coen brothers throw knives at pictures of each other when they get home, but Gareth and I had such fun. It was like being kids again, only more sophisticated." He stops and grins. "Perhaps I should say, 'only marginally more sophisticated'! We certainly have more expensive toys now. ... We had a very respectful understanding of each other's positions. Gareth and I never have full-blown rows. We avoid disputes because we're particularly vigilant about each other's feelings. We never argue."
When he was invited to audition [for Band Of Brothers] at Spielberg's office in Hollywood, though, Lewis was convinced he had no chance of landing the role. "When I got there, they had photos of Dick Winters as a young man all over the wall of the office, and I sat down next to a guy who was the spitting image of him. He said: 'I'm here for Dick Winters,' and my heart sank. Anyway, when I went in, it was surreal because Steven did the classic American thing of saying: 'You live in London, do you know John?', and I thought: 'Not unless he's been in Kensal Green recently.' It turned out they just wanted to see what kind of a bloke I was, and when I came out Steven's assistant said: 'Are you ready for the boot camp in March?' I jumped up, shouted 'Sure am, buddy', and kissed everyone in the room."
"Tom Hanks said to me: 'You're going to be the first ever red-headed film star!' 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."
The actor lapped up the atmosphere in Hollywood [while there filming the first season of Life in 2007]. "The only spanner in the works," he reveals, "was that our two children are very young and are only 14 months apart, and it was initially difficult for the family when we all went out there. I was routinely working 16 hours a day. A US television shoot just doesn't go into a normal day. A lot of divorces happen out there, but," he adds, wryly, "everyone has nice cars and a swimming pool. As an introduction to Hollywood for our family, it was definitely tough."

THE EVENING STANDARD, 03/03/08:

Damian Lewis, who stars in his film-director brother Gareth's debut feature The Baker, about a hitman who flees London for a remote Welsh village to reinvent himself as a baker, is obviously not one for method acting. Asked for his own tips on making bread at the premiere at the Ritzy in Brixton over the weekend, Old Etonian Lewis replied: "Wake up at 4 am, turn on the electronic bread-maker in the kitchen, go back to bed, and by 8 am the loaf will be ready."

THE TELEGRAPH, 03/22/08:

Last book read: "Independence Day by Richard Ford"
Last film seen: "The Baker"
Last music heard: "Mozart, on my children's musical caterpillar"
Last dose of live culture: "Women of Troy by Euripides at the National Theatre. A superb production by Katie Mitchell"
What, in human history, do you wish had never been invented? "Text messaging. People's need for instant answers is a tyranny."
If you could have been born in any century, which would it be? "The first. The only time sandals looked cool."
What cliché is most relevant to you? "'Don't put off until tomorrow what you can do today'. I try, God I try, but it's no use."
The ending to which film/book has most disappointed you? "Memento. Because it was at the beginning and I missed it."
What is your fantasy other job? "Liverpool No. 10. And cleaning Stevie Gerrard's boots."
If you had to be stranded in any one place in the world, where would it be? "On Black Mountain in Wales. It's the only place I've been where the air tastes even better than it smells."
Name something you truly believe in. "Family. And rehabilitation for those who have been radicalised as a result of poverty and ignorance."
Who would you most like to sit next to on a long-haul flight? "George W Bush. I'd ask: 'What the hell were you thinking?' I don't need the answer, just the chance to shout at him for 15 hours."
Which public figure do you think is most overrated? "Adolf Hitler. He was a lot worse than people realised."
What question are you never asked, and most want to answer? "'Damian, how can we win the World Cup?' The answer involves me playing."
What has been your greatest discovery online? "How to build a shed. I've (half) put one up in my garden, but I forgot to put my bike inside and it got nicked. I'll finish it tomorrow."

THE TELEGRAPH, 03/23/08:

As children the two boys [Damian and younger brother Gareth] often resorted to fisticuffs - at 10 Damian recalled a particularly nasty fight in which his brother had gone down like "a sack of potatoes" - but he insists there were no quarrels while they were making the film [the Baker]. "No, there wasn't any of that," Damian insists. "Gareth is much more mature than me so it didn't feel odd at all taking directions from him." Gareth, for his part, confirms: "It was a tantrum-free set."

THE NEW STRAITS TIMES, 04/21/08:

"Working in theatre gives you discipline and that makes a lot of British actors good to work with," explains Lewis. "A lot of American actors don't have that discipline. An English person can bring an old-fashioned moral quality."
"I enjoy the fact that I'm becoming better known internationally because it gives you more choices," he says. "I don't want to be a 45-year-old man walking into the office of a 25-year-old director and asking for a job. I want to have control and be my own boss. That's what's good about what is happening now because I have more power."
"I always work with a voice coach before every show. And I just stay in an American accent once I'm surrounded by Americans. I find that it makes it a lot easier for me to work in an American accent. I research each role I play and I have a lot of videotape to look at for this."
"TV is a global industry now and you want the people who are best for a particular role. I was flattered that the producers requested me [for Life]. It frees me up and gives me a lot of other opportunities. It's great; I'm enjoying it hugely."
"I'm on the phone to a few of [the other British Actors on American TV]; some of them are friends, some of them I don't know so well. But no, there is no kind of TV Brit Pack developing as yet."
With your wife and children in Britain and your show filming in the US, how do you maintain your relationship? "We've been asking ourselves that exact same question and we have no answers yet."
You just welcomed your second child. How is fatherhood? "It's blissful. They're fantastic. You don't sleep and you clear up a lot of vomit. Who could want anything more?"

TOTAL FILM, 05/08:

You talkin' to me?
Gareth: "That was my stock reply when my actors would ask me a question. There's a bit in the film where Damian's character is making a date-movie video and, you know, it's sort of Travis Bickle lite."
Do you feel lucky, punk?
Damian: "I feel incredibly lucky. There were times when I'd romanticise making a feature film with my brother. He'd written a film and was going to direct and I was going to act in it. It seemed an incredibly privileged thing to be doing ..."
Gareth: "... and to work on such a quality script."
Damian: "Ugh, the material. ... Rewrites every morning!"
Play it again, Sam ...
Gareth: "That's not right."
Damian: "It's 'Play it, Sam.' Play It Again, Sam is Woody Allen. Woody works nice hours. He wraps at four."
Gareth: "I heard he falls asleep at four. ... But the guy's churning out movies. You'd think at some point he'd realise that a bit more script development might be in order. But his early stuff is pure genius. He's one of my heroes."
What if you could go back in time and take those hours of pain and darkness and replace them with something better?
Gareth: "You gotta be kidding. I love pain and darkness!"
Damian: "You can't have one without the other."
Gareth: "As my wife will testify, there's this perception that if you write comedy, you're a fluffy person who's always seeing the funny side. But actually what happens is comedy gets sucked out of you and it doesn't leave a lot of laughs."
You ever danced with the devil by the pale moonlight?
Gareth: "Not since I was married."
Damian: "There was a time -- when you got married and had children and I was just running around being irresponsible -- I felt like your younger brother. It was quite interesting and then a bit alarming. Then I got married. I didn't get married just to feel older again -- I'd like to make that clear in case my wife reads this. I fell in love with a beautiful girl."
What is the last thing you do remember?
Gareth: "Changing a nappy at 2:35 am last night."
Damian: "I found myself stroking rare-breed sheep and pigs and goats somewhere on the edge of Tenby."
Gareth: "I thought you were going to say somewhere on the edge of sanity. ..."
Damian: "Somewhere on the edge of my bed! I saw a furry pig for the first time."
Gareth: "It's amazing -- the names people come up with for their private parts."
Damian: "My wife and I, we have little romantic nicknames for each other."
Gareth: "'Put the "Hairy Pig" away!'"
You either surf or you fight. ...
Gareth: "Huey."
Damian: "Huey Lewis?"
Gareth: "No, the helicopters in Apocalypse Now. Coppola had a breakdown and Sheen had a heart attack. It makes our whole experience seem quite parochial and lovely. It was just like one big hug, wasn't it?"
I'll make him an offer he can't refuse. ...
Gareth: "Well, that's basically what I did to Damian. If you hadn't done the film, you would have had to answer to our dad."
Damian: "I actually made Gareth the offer. I said, 'I will be in your film.' That was the extent of my magnitude."
Gareth: "I knew what he meant was, 'I expect the favour returned, when I'm down on my luck and you're riding your star. I expect you to reinvent me like Travolta and Tarentino.'"
Damian: "In a surfing movie."
I took the liberty of bulshitting you. (The Blues Brothers).
Gareth: "Would you see yourself as Jake or Elwood?"
Damian: "Elwood was Aykroyd. Dan Aykroyd was funny."
Gareth: "You're definitely Jake."
Damian: "Oh, I'm dead."
Gareth: "Yeah, you're a bloated drug addict. Hey, didn't we have that great swim in the pool next to where Belushi died? Oh baby, that was so money."
Damian: "Naked swimming at Chateau Marmont, with the spirit of John Belushi looking over us."
Gareth: "Those were the days."

VARIETY, 06/05/08:

"I bought [Hugh Laurie's] house in London," Lewis says from the U.K., just a few weeks before coming to Los Angeles to begin filming the second season of his NBC drama. "His agent was a mutual friend, and I called him to say I'm sitting in your bedroom. Hugh's advice was, 'You better get used to working hard. Incredibly hard.'"
"I had offers for network TV series, but the timing hadn't been right. I've been very fortunate not to chase work for money. 'Life' was attractive for creative reasons."
On his American accent: "I have sessions with dialect coaches to make it specific, but my ambition has always been to not sound like the Limey doing an American accent. Luckily, I've had opportunities to play with it."
Favorite scene in Life: "When Crews delivers a fairy tale white horse to his ex-wife because he 'always promised.' It succeeds in being both incredibly romantic and eccentric."
What he likes most about Charlie Crews: "He's someone who's tremendously engaging and has been given a second chance to reinvent himself. He sees the world with new eyes and is reborn."
TV guilty pleasure: "We just had our baby, and I've been watching 'X Factor' and 'Pop Idol.' "

THE OBSERVER, 06/15/08:

"LA is like an eccentric beach town. Next to London, it feels utterly provincial but remains fascinating. My wife says she doesn't like living in a town where you may get swallowed up by an earthquake at any moment. But it's fantastic for our children to be able to walk on Hampstead Heath one half of the year and on Santa Monica beach the other."
"There's been a resurgence in American TV over the past decade with witty, compelling dramas and Life can be part of that. Being in a show like this is peppered with small victories. They throw enormous parties for you because you're going for a second season and the fact that they may can you in three months doesn't matter."
"In art -- I've just likened my acting to art so I have to be very careful -- you have to challenge. The big bugbear for an actor is typecasting, but I think I have managed to avoid that."
"I'm afraid to disappoint, but my boarding experience was not like being in prison - certainly not a maximum security prison."

COUTTS WOMEN, 07/08:

While McCrory did the nightshifts recently, Lewis spent his days doing up their Tufnell Park home, climbing ladders and knocking down walls, so much so that Manon thought it was his day job.

LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL, 09/14/08:

"I've played so many Americans now over the last six or seven years, that I developed, I guess, an American persona that I just feel is part of me."

CINEMA SPY, 09/28/08:

On preparing for the role of Zen-inspired Charlie Crews in Life: "For the first half of the first season I had to wear a wig because I shaved my head. I was in a monastery for three months prior to filming. [laughs] No, I read books and have a friend actually who has been a Buddhist monk in upstate New York, and consulted him. And just, you know, researched in conventional ways. ... I would wake up to Alan Watts and my half hour drive into work every morning. So that was it really. You find actually that it aligns with just the way we all try and live our lives. I think people who grew up in big cities like I did - I think a lot of us did -- you find yourself trying to find still moments in your life and movements of quiet peace, moments when you just embrace what’s happening now, stop projecting forward, stop regretting what’s passed. I find that’s a daily struggle for me and I think for a lot of people. So it really just was sort of an expansion of an idea that we grapple with daily anyway. So it was a lot of fun to investigate."
On the challenges of portraying Charlie Crews and filming the series Life: "Well, it’s easy inasmuch as the writing is excellent. It’s fun and it’s serious when it needs to be. It’s entertainment. But the hours are difficult. There’s no question. No one is going to pretend otherwise and to stay focused on any sort of preparation that you did earlier on in the day when you were fresh is hard when you’re shooting important key scenes at 3:00 in the morning. I wish we could make this show in shorter time but I happen to know that that’s the experience for a lot of other shows, too. It’s hard. It’s a little brutalizing. I think what it does to you working long hours like that, I think it affects your outlook, affects your interaction with the world around you, with other people around you. And you end up using a lot of energy just trying to maintain an adjustment and a balance. I wish I didn’t have to spend so much energy doing that. But it’s not just me. Everyone is having to do the same thing."

TORONTO STAR, 09/29/08:

On living in California during the production of Life: "I love it. As you probably can tell, I'm not from here and it's very much part of my personal adventure, which is to come and live in California and be on the Pacific Ocean. I grew up in a North European city, (so I) didn't see much sunshine. In fact, I think I've seen more sunshine in this one year than I've seen in my entire life. So I'm a little bit shocked. But I love it. I love it. Getting to know a new culture, a new city ... I feel more like Charlie Crews than I could say."

MAXIM, 10/08:

"We work 16-hour days [on Life], which are exhausting. You have to be prepared or else you're thrashing around to keep your head above water. It's harder than it looks, but I wouldn't trade it for anything."
"We did a scene [in Life] where the U.S. silver medal sumo champion grabbed me by my shoulders and pushed me repeatedly against the side of this motor home. I thought I was going to lose my brain. Rarely am I physically afraid of someone, but I was absolutely terrified."
"The shittiest job I had was selling car alarms. I wasn't going around looking at people's swanky cars saying, 'I think you could use the UP3Z-40.' I was cold-calling them on the phone. I'd get off the subway every day carrying my Walkman, which was the size of a brick, and I'd always hear the same song. Unfortunately, Phil Collins and the worst song he ever wrote, 'Another Day in Paradise,' are forever connected with me selling car alarms. Phil put me in such a bad mood I was unable to charm the customers. It drove me fucking insane."

ITV PRESS PACK, 10/06/08:

"Because of this part I've become a fruit pusher. You can find me in downtown LA just dealing fruit on a corner. I eat a lot of fruit anyway in the summer, I just do. So it's a happy coincidence that Rand Ravich wrote this amazing, quirky character eating a lot of fruit. One day on set I was coming back from catering with a big bowl of fruit and some guy stopped me and said 'Are you insane? Don't you eat enough fruit as it is?'"
"I actually have a friend who's a Buddhist and who's been in a monastery for a long time. Talking to him about that philosophy, listening to Alan Watts CDs and doing a lot of reading all helped to get into that mindset."
"I'm not really like Charlie -- I think my views are quite traditional in general, but I do have lots of contradictions. I can be rather old fashioned and I do have a strong work ethic. But I think I've got an utterly frivolous side as well. I can be quiet earnest about things and at other times I can be completely disrespectful as well."
"I get asked a lot about working in the States and playing an American. I guess in terms of Brits playing Americans and vice versa, I just think the industry is a global thing now and I think producers and audiences just want the people that are best for each particular role. I was hugely flattered by their request for me and that they wanted me for the role. It seems to be working out so it's been great."
"Getting the accent hasn't been too bad. I always work with a voice coach before every new job I do. I actually just stay in an American accent once I'm over here surrounded by Americans. I find that it makes it a lot easier for me to work in because I don't have to make those transitions from British to American throughout the day. I do that and I research each role I play so I had a lot of videotape to look at for this. There was no one accent that I based it on. But there was some sounds I wanted to avoid that might make it sound too East Coast and there were sounds that I wanted to put in there give it a hint of West Coast. But he shouldn't sound like a surfer dude! So in the end I think it has come out as a Midwestern sounding American accent and that should be easy on everyone's ears. It shouldn't jar and should be believable I hope."
"I would like to come back to work in the UK again, depending on the project. The Forsyte Saga was a big break through for me, and such a popular show, it was fantastic to be part of. So if there is really good quality stuff like that then I'd love to be a part of it. There are still a lot of small interesting independent films, and I enjoy that contrast between them and something like Life. Doing a network TV show you couldn't be more of a part of mainstream Hollywood if you tried. You are slap-bang in commercial Hollywood and it's a fascinating experience seeing how the machine works from the inside."

EVENING STANDARD MAGAZINE, 10/10/08:

"I have a group of fans who call themselves the Damian Bunnies. They'll go online and chat about various things I've done and show up at film festivals and things. I'll ask them where they're from and they'll go: 'Colorado,' and I'll go, 'Thank you, but that's insane to come out all this way.' I did have a problem with one person recently, though, a bad experience, but it was dealt with by security, luckily."
"I'd always resisted moving out here [to Los Angeles] but then my personal circumstances changed. I got married, had a baby girl and bought a lovely, rambling family house in North London. I felt that some fantasy of mine was being realised with my beautiful wife, my children, my lifestyle and my friends, and I suppose I was becoming quite fearful of complacency or smugness. So when I got offered this job, I looked at Helen and said: 'Is it crazy to up sticks and go live somewhere else for three or four years?' and it seemed like the perfect time to do it. I definitely don't want to educate my children here, so before settling in a city where we're likely to be for the most part of our lives, we decided it would be fun to live by the beach and have an adventure as a family before the kids go to school."
"Although I know it's a cliché for Brits in California to live in Santa Monica, we just figured if we're going to travel 11 hours by plane and there's a possibility of living by the Pacific Ocean at the other end, then why not take it? We live in a buckled, warped, sun-kissed old beach house and we love it. The kids run around with no clothes on, go swimming in the sea and we go walking along the beach. It's very different to walking down the street in Tufnell Park. There's no slogging about on the Tube in the rain and in terms of lifestyle, it's definitely easier. But when it comes to the hours I have to work per week, well, neither of us really expected it and even though I'm kept from my family a bit more than I would like to be, the moments we are together, we're together on a beach in the sunshine. If the show carries on being successful, then I'm out here for eight months of the year, but our mindset is very definitely one where we live in London but rent out here."
"I don't consider myself an Angeleno at all and it's not my favourite place in the world by any stretch of the imagination. But I'm here for business and that's pretty much what it is, and even though I only do projects where I feel the material is good, it's no secret that they pay much more here than in London. But the value system is so different. Their work ethic is incredible and I have so much respect for the people out here, but being here has made both Helen and myself feel much more European. The emphasis here is very much on work and on generating money, to the detriment of people's personal lives I think, and we'll move back to London in the end."
On Damian and Helen managing with a family and two careers: "We're kind of working things out as we go along, but I've read interviews with other couples who basically alternate the jobs they do and accommodate each other and, generally speaking, we try to do that. Helen did a film in South Africa last year [Flashbacks Of A Fool with Daniel Craig] and I went along as nanny to Manon for two weeks. Helen's an acclaimed actress and it would be inconceivable that she doesn't work, but there are always going to be times when the jobs cross over and we just want to minimise the times our two children are being looked after by a nanny."
"I'd always been a bit wary of long-running TV shows because you sign a long option on one and should it become a rip-roaring success, you find yourself doing it for the next ten years of your life if you're not careful. But it's so well-written and more than just a cop show in that it's pretty genre-bending. And as a character, Charlie's great to play. He's very much a larger-than-life character and in that sense, the series is much more reminiscent of the character-driven cop shows like Kojak, The Rockford Files and Columbo."
"Because the series [Band Of Brothers] was such a hit, I kind of ended up on the top of all these TV casting lists. I resisted it then because I wanted to keep my career quite eclectic and also because I just wasn't brave enough to come out here and do it on my own and risk the potential loneliness of that experience. I'll admit I was quite scared and now doing this with my family is a completely different experience altogether."
"About five years ago, I invited Tom [Hanks] to a birthday party I was having in L.A. and he said he couldn't make it. I had about 30 friends at this thing and I kept a tab running behind the bar and when I went to settle the bill, the guy said: 'It's been taken care of. Happy Birthday from Mr. Hanks.' That was pretty stylish, I thought."
"[My father] loved the theatre and was a very enthusiastic dancer, too. He lived in Chicago when he was younger and was in a nightclub, twirling some lady around on the dancefloor, when a man came up to him and said: 'Why don't you come to L.A. to audition?' He always talked about it slightly ruefully in an 'if only' kind of way, but by then, he was too set up in the insurance business to pursue it any further."
"There's a very particular strand of English middle-class family that likes going to the theatre together, and we were definitely part of that."
"Oh, [Gulliver]'s a chubber. Two stone and not even a year old. I was a big fatty like him when I was a baby -- I looked like a giant baked bean! You know, I found myself the other day pushing the double buggy along the cycle path in Santa Monica with my kids inside, jogging along behind them in the sunshine, and I thought to myself: 'Damian, you big tit!'"

TELEGRAPH, 10/25/08:

Charlie Crews, the character Damian Lewis plays in Life -- ITV's new drama import from America -- is perpetually defeated by modern technology. Lewis isn't too hot on it himself. The London-born 37-year-old can't stand Facebook, worries that video games are a threat to the film business and struggles with text messages. When we meet he is wrestling with his mobile phone: "Sorry, I've just got to text my sister-in-law, who's a tyrant -- if I don't text back within half an hour she shouts at me," he says. "My text response time is usually about two days." His mobile, grey and chunky, is a model so antiquated that most teenagers would probably mistake it for a TV remote control.
"I take great pride in the fact that, on the whole, people think I'm American."
"Actually, this is a good opportunity for me to say this. In the lead-up to the filming [of Have I Got News For You], I accepted a horrible put-down [from the writers] in which I basically rubbished bicyclists. I get gyp about it every time I go in my local bicycle shop in Kentish Town. So I've always vowed that if I go on again I'll make a public statement about how I love bicyclists and that I was weak and in desperate need of a gag. ... That's never going to go in your article, is it?"
When he's shooting Life he brings the family to stay in Santa Monica with him, but he can't see them much: "A regular day on set is 13 hours," he says. Because of the hours, Life will be the last TV series he makes, he says.

THE TIMES, 11/05/08:

"When I'm in LA, I speak exclusively with an American accent. I don't use it to my wife. Or to my kids -- they'd be totally freaked out."

WASHINGTON POST, 12/28/08:

If acting hadn't panned out: "I'd be a professional Ping-Pong player. I'm not that good. I'm not Chinese good. But I hold [the paddle] like a pen. I hold it orthodox Western style. And that's all I'm prepared to give up about my game, in case anyone reads this. ... I don't want people winning."

THE OBSERVER, 04/05/09:

"I've got Wikipedia insight. I used to be able to sit at dinner parties and talk at length about a novel, having just read the jacket in a bookshop. Now it's like I've got the jacket and the inside cover as well, but nothing more."
"Boarding school gives you precocious social skills for life. You're separated from your parents and you learn about peer groups and gain confidence. When I was in my 20s people would remark on it, which I now realise was them remarking on your awful precociousness. I'm undecided as to the damage it possibly does to an eight-year-old, especially learning not to cry."
"Being with Americans is a bit like hanging out with a teenager. They haven't quite developed the confidence to have a sense of humour about themselves, which just comes with age. And they also have that forward-thrusting energy a teenager has."
"It's quite easy to assume when you first have children that you'll manage your life as you always have but you're just accessorised in some interesting, cute way. It's not entirely true."
"Manners are exceptionally important. I was brought up with a rather Edwardian attitude towards them - I was encouraged to call people Sir, and there were occasions when we were encouraged to knock on the living room door before going in."
"Grief is very lonely, and even with your closest, most cherished people around you you'll rarely experience the same stage of grief together. If we were really civilised in our western culture we would give people grief leave, much like maternity leave."
"People find it very difficult to be indifferent to red hair. You get more nicknames than anyone else, which is nice. Rusty, Duracell, Carrot Top, Copper Top, Ginge. Out here it's 'Big Red'. Packing's harder, because you have to take a lot of sun-cream."
"It's a good time to stop partying when you're surrounded by Hydras, when people start growing second and third heads in front of your eyes, and everything goes into that muffled sound. Unfortunately, for a long time I didn't get out in time. Now, if I can get a good solid hour-and-a-half's partying in between 9 and 10.30, I'm happy."
"Having gone to Eton doesn't further my career. I kept the fact I went there quiet for the longest time, because I didn't want to be stereotyped. I got to a point in my career when I wasn't being stereotyped and then I started to admit it. Almost the next day any article I did was 'Old Etonian Damian Lewis'."
"Measure yourself against yourself, not other people. There will always be someone more successful, better looking, wealthier, brighter, smarter, funnier. Just learn to appreciate what it is you've achieved for yourself, and if your success for the day is successfully wrestling one of your children's turds out of the bath then that's good."
"I missed David Cameron at Eton. Although it didn't stop me making jokes about him on Have I Got News For You. I bumped into him on Hampstead Heath and apologised. I said, 'I hope you didn't mind me making sexual references about your good self on the show,' and he looked at me blankly and said, 'It's all fine.'"
"There was a curious moment on set the other day where there were a lot of redheads in the room. My initial response was, I don't really like this. I didn't feel quite so special."

THE DEADBOLT, 04/08/09:

"You get attached to characters the longer you play them. Working in network TV, completing a season of network TV is a huge accomplishment, whether it’s good or crap as far as I’m concerned. It’s an endurance test. You have to fight very hard just to create a little bubble around yourself. Just to give yourself enough space daily in which you can be creative, because there’s a constant clamor around you."
Did Damian always want to be an actor? "Yeah. I wanted to run a bingo hall but I ended up acting. I always acted in school productions, that kind of meddle. I wasn’t a child actor. I wasn’t a performer or anything like that. In fact, the kind of schools I went to would suggest that would not be the path one would take. But I suppose my road and aspirations lay in theater, because I grew up in London where our theater tradition is very strong and it didn’t really involve filming TV. And the more I really worked in film and TV is when I became to appreciate it. I love doing both now, love having that opportunity to go to, and I slide backwards and forwards between the two."

TELEVISION WITHOUT PITY, 04/08/09:

"You get attached to characters you play. Obviously, the longer you play them the longer you get attached. ompleting a season of network TV is a huge accomplishment, whether it's good or crap as far as I'm concerned. It's an enduring test, and you have to fight very hard just to give yourself enough space daily in which you can be creative, because there is a constant clamor around you. If you're the writer/creator like Rand [Ravich of Life], you're never left alone. Similarly, if you're the star of the show, you're never left alone. There are people in your face all the time. And you have to work very hard just to create that little bubble of space around yourself. And that actually takes as much energy as it does just doing the work. So I feel a huge sense of achievement and accomplishment from doing two seasons. I'm extremely proud of it. And I'm very attached to the character. I'm very attached to all the people I work with. It's been an intimate experience. And at the heart of the commercial machine, you know, the beast. And that's quite difficult to achieve. But it's been hugely enjoyable for that reason. "

INSPIRED BY MUSIC, 07/09:

"When I was a child, we used to spend summers in a beautiful big country house in Norfolk near Hunstanton. There was an attic that my brother and I would escape to and listen to music. They were summers full of the sounds of Madness (the first time round) and The Beatles (not the first time round). I was about ten. In truth, I might easily choose any one of their songs but as I sat daydreaming, looking out of the attic window, one song not so much inspired me as always haunted me and that song was Eleanor Rigby. As a young boy, it was a collection of sounds and images only. But even then, at the age of ten, it was startling to hear a song open with a choral: "Ah, look at all the lonely people." Even more startling to hear that Eleanor "wears the face that she keeps in a jar by the door ...." Now of course as I sit daydreaming and staring out of windows, something I am almost always doing when sitting at my desk, the song has a clear resonance: it is a song about solitude, but more tellingly, loneliness. It is a beautiful song charged with a pulsing melancholy. As a ten-year-old, I would listen quite literally to the lines: "All the lonely people, where do they all come from, All the lonely people, where do they all belong?" Now when I lsten to them, I think more of how terrible loneliness is. That no one should be allowed to be lonely. That no one should be buried "... along with their name." The most important thing we can do is interact with one another. To embrace one another with all our faults. It comes with frustrations, sure. But nothing is as awful as loneliness."

UNITED BYCYCLING, 08/09:

"I live in North London and I can get to Soho on bike routes in 15 minutes and I love it. We should have more cycle routes. It’s a fantastic way to get about. We also ride a lot together as a family. I love having my son and my daughter on the back of my bike. It’s a great way of taking your kids around. Its gets them out of the buggy - and it’s a real treat for them."

TODAY'S GOLFER, 09/09:

"I was a bit naïve because I didn't realise to what extent [Band Of Brothers] had been hyped in Los Angeles and that every young American actor wanted to be in the show, which was the most expensive TV show to be made at that point. I went for the audition and just assumed I was going to gather dust on some shelf in LA even though it was later revealed that I was the guy they were always going to cast from the first audition."
"[Band Of Brothers] was a fun passage, very heady days and, for the most part, the cast were -- and still are -- incredibly close. In fact we have a reunion every year, the 10th one is coming up next year. We kind of re-live the experience of making Band Of Brothers in the same way a lot of the original heroes re-live their time in the war, although of course they're not really comparable. It was a huge part of my life and continues to be. If [Helen] catches me watching [my box set DVD of it], she says I'm the saddest person she's ever met. I respond with something along the lines of 'watch it with me, your husband's a hero and is winning the Second World War'. Actually, that is a bit of a problem, because I do meet people who think I did win the war, and I have to say, 'look, I'm an actor ...'"
"It was fabulous working with [Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks]. I had my 30th birthday party in LA a year or two after Band Of Brothers but unfortunately Tom couldn't make it. I went to pay for the bar at the end of the night only to be told it had been taken care of ... 'Mr. Hanks says Happy Birthday'. Very nice man, that Thomas Hanks. Tom sends me a $2 bill every year following the saying 'queer as a two bob note'. Many Americans, you see, think that English people are gay -- there's so much emphasis on machismo in America, you know. Like they nearly didn't vote in Obama because they know he likes cappuccinos: what's the matter with some spare ribs and a beer? Or maybe they just think I'm gay." (He grins.)
Lewis reveals he's been playing golf since he was eight and admits, "I should be a lot better than I am."
"LA is a lot of fun, though at the same time a maddening place. It's a big contrast and a second-rate city compared to London -- it's a suburban, rather provincial beachtown, actually. Another thing is that in America, people are terrified about being held responsible for every decision that is made, so decisions always get made by committee. That's a chronic condition of Hollywood -- a palpable and pervasive fear that spreads through the whole industry. No one wants to take too much of a risk in case things go wrong."
"I've had some great experiences in TV, theatre and films. But I've also made some big budget movies such as Dreamcatcher, a big Stephen King film with lots of special effects, which haven't been successful. That's very frustrating, and you think 'what a waste of money that was' and 'I've worked my nuts off for nothing'. In a way, actors are like athletes. You've got to wait all day till your 100m race, and when you come out, you better be on it because you've got under 10 seconds to blow everyone away!"
"I love acting, though I'm quite picky what I do. I don't always choose the most obvious commercial thing -- I turned down Blackhawk Down because I didn't want to play another soldier and be stuck in a Moroccan desert for five months. Robert de Niro is bang on when he says 'acting is about choices'. It is about making intelligent choices, and I mean that in terms of how you interpret the character and the story."
He's a big Liverpool FC fan.
"I still play a bit of footie once or twice a week."
His father was a City broker and his maternal grandfather, Ian Frank Bowater, was once Lord Mayor of London.
Lewis started working life as a telemarketer selling car alarms.
He loved hosting 'Have I Got News For You' despite 'stick' from Ian Hislop and Paul Merton. "Being a redhead and an Old Etonian gave them two targets."
He once had a female stalker in America. "She became a bit threatening, so I had to have secrity for a while. It can get weird."
"I understand the critics, they just don't appreciate what we do. Many people tell me it's their last chance."
Lewis' favorite actors include: Marlon Brando - "He's someone I definitely look up to." Jack Lemmon - "I love him and his work. Hugely." Daniel Day Lewis - "I occasionally see him on flights to and from the US. He's not only an amazing actor, but he can also make you a good pair of shoes -- he's a pretty nifty cobbler back home in a remote corner of Ireland."

TELEGRAPH, 11/24/09:

Lewis, who resolved on becoming an actor as a schoolboy at Eton, left the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 1993 with his mind very much set on conquering the stage: "My heroes were all in the theatre. I wanted to be part of that great tradition that ran back to Garrick and Macready and Kean. That's what I wished for, when I was asleep and dreaming."
"'Life' was perfect. What I look for as an actor is behavioural complexity and that role contained that in spades."
"Aside from the work, the whole experience [of living in Southern California while filming 'Life'] was everything I could have wanted it to be -- it was a wonderful adventure."
He has experienced the Hollywood high-life from the inside. Is there a part of him that has experienced an Alceste-like revulsion at the shallowness of it all? "I don't set myself up to be one thing or the other, because I will only end up contradicting myself. There have been times when I have enjoyed the frippery and sheer 15-minuteness of it all -- the instant gratification and the superficial glamour of it -- but there are moments when I'm just as strongly pulling in the other direction and rejecting it all as shallow, silly and insincere. I'm no more or less antisocial than the next person. It's important to me, though, that I'm at the right end of the acting spectrum. I want to make a clear distinction between people who take acting seriously and people who call themselves actors because they've been on reality TV or something." He smiles. "I can be a little bit misanthropic about that, I suppose."

SUPERNATURAL SISTERS, 11/25/09:

An anecdote from Richard Speight, Jr.: "The TV show 'Life' had a band made up of Damian Lewis (the lead actor and an old friend from 'Band Of Brothers') and some crew folks. They were playing a few songs in a bar in Culver City and needed someone to sit in on lead guitar, so Damian asked me. That was a blast."

METRO, 12/14/09:

"In LA, they exist to work. I would regularly work a 75-hour week [on Life]. I enjoyed it enormously but it was never my intention to be an LA TV actor jumping from one show to the next. It's a luxurious living but it's also rather deadening."
"You have to seek variety [as an actor], particularly if you want to do theatre, which is the thing that drives me and which is somehow lacking when I'm doing these other things."
"I was at a posh party last night and it was fascinating to be with people whose ambition has obscured any instinctive, honest response they may have once had. And I feel split in two. I had an education that promotes that but I chose a profession that is rabidly anti that. So I live in both, sometimes unhappily."
"I had no notion of success when I was younger but I also never thought I would fail, either. I chose to do drama, and then I thought: I'm at drama school and presumably the next thing that happens is I get a job and work."
"I always wrestle with the fact that actors don't live a normal life like everyone else. There's no real contact with 'the very day'. I always find myself being drawn to experiencing that in some way. Because we actors are essentially childish and spoilt."

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