With his red hair and rare talent, Damian Lewis has made the journey from the RSC to Band Of Brothers look easy. If only it were true. ...

by Daphne Lockyer, The British Academy Television Awards, April 13, 2003

If Damian Lewis wasn't so recognisable, you might think he was a stockbroker or a professional of some sort. That he's an actor is no surprise, however, to anyone who knows him well. While his peers at Eton plotted careers in politics and high finance, Lewis formed his own theatre group, acted in countless school productions and dreamed of starring in big-screen epics.

"I had a rather precocious sense of not wanting to follow the beaten path -- Eton, Oxbridge, a career in the world of finance or whatever. I knew pretty early on that I wanted to act, and fortunately I had parents who supported me in that dream.

"I always remember that my dad said, 'It's important to do the thing that you're best at, or your life will always be a disappointment to you. I think that was very sound advice."

Advice that has paid off: Lewis' self assurance, strong work ethic and steely determination marked him out early at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where he trained, as one of those most likely to succeed. After leaving drama school, he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, proving himself on stage before TV beckoned. Since then, he's played leading roles in The Forsyte Saga, Warriors, Hearts And Bones and Jeffrey Archer: The Truth.

Major Player

It was his role as Major Richard Winters in HBO's epic WWII mini-series Band Of Brothers that really caught the public's eye in the US and here at home. Lewis auditioned after producers Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks failed to find the right actor in America and cast the net wider. Lewis went up for the part in London, then found himself whisked over to L.A. to meet the dynamic duo.

"There was something a little bit surreal about it, "he says. "It was a completely blind piece of casting. They knew nothing about me, they'd seen nothing I'd done. Yet, when they met me they were willing to make a complete leap of faith, for which I am eternally grateful.

"Viewed in that way, my getting the part was one of those great Hollywood moments. Everyone here was saying, 'Oh my God! Damian Lewis has got the lead role in this huge TV epic. Can you believe it?' Everyone in America was saying, 'Who's this limey? What's he done? Can he do an American accent? What colour's his hair?' It was fantastic to be part of that buzz, though at the time I was so busy just getting into the role that I wasn't fully aware of it."

Lewis isn't exaggerating about getting into the role -- he crawled through mud and did press ups at a real boot camp, and even met up with the real Major Richard Winters, a WWII hero now in his eighties.

"I do put an awful lot into the job," Lewis admits, "possibly a throw back to my upbringing which was underpinned by a reall middle class work ethic. There was a philosophy at home of always being 'useful', so when I work, I feel guilty if I take the easy route. I fully expect and want to work hard."

After seeing Band Of Brothers, director Lawrence Kasdan offered Lewis a leading role in the upcoming $80m film adaptation of Stephen King's Dreamcatcher, in which Lewis plays a Boston history teacher who spends a weekend in the woods with friends and finds himself possessed by an alien spirit.

"You grow up and sit in a cinema and watch Raiders Of The Lost Ark or Lawrence Of Arabia. You see these big epics unfolding and it's fantasy time. Then, if you can actually be able to be part of that, that's really exciting. I'd be lying to you if I said I didn't have ambitions to be a big screen actor. Who in the business doesn't?"

Unfortunately, this ambition is bound to take him away from England: "Along with every other young British actor or director I know, I'd far prefer to be doing it here than in America. I'd love to be part of a resurgent British film industry, but, for the moment, we don't have the money to make the films with the kind of visual scope that interests me. It's a pity, but it's true."

Small Screen

It seems that the UK's television projects are of interest to Lewis, however. He recently wrapped up the second series of The Forsyte Saga for Granada, in which he plays Soames -- "arguably the villain, but he's also a man tortured by his passions. A flawed and vulnerable human being. I see him in a much more three-dimensional way than someone we just love to hate."

As far as Lewis is concerned, television in general is more demanding of actors than big-budget movies. "In big films, responsibility tends to be wrested from actors. Once you're in a big concept movie, it's the thrill of the story that counts. As an actor, you can get away with being mediocre, and the movie can still be fun and exciting. If you're playing Soames in The Forsyte Saga and you're not good or interesting to watch, then, arguably, the whole series could fall on its face. So, actually, TV is far more actor-led than film."

That would also be true of Lewis' recent performance in Jeffrey Archer: The Truth, as the eponymous "hero" in a comic drama about the disgraced Tory.

"I read the script and it made me laugh out loud, so I wanted to be part of it," he says. "Part of the appeal was simply to do something lighthearted for a change. After Band Of Brothers and the first series of The Forsyte Saga, it was nice to remember that I do still have some laughter in me."

Certainly, it was in sharp contrast to the more troubling performances now becoming the actor's stock in trade. In Hearts And Bones on the BBC, for example, he played Mark Rose, a man struggling to accept that his marriage to Dervla Kirwan's character is heading for the rocks. In Warriors on the BBC, he played a British army officer coping with the moral confusions at Bosnia.

The actor considers his work in Warriors to be among his best: "In many ways for me, it was the biggest project because it was the first time I'd done any sort of serious drama on TV, the first time I'd really proved to myself that I could act in front of the camera. It gave me the confidence to believe in myself, and that's half the trick of acting."

It's part of the trick, too, to maintain a childlike openness to roles: "To me, acting is essentially playing, although obviously there's some craft thrown in. As kids [growing up in St. John's Wood], my brother and I used to pretend we were private eyes, for example, wandering around solving crimes, and we used to believe it and totally enter that world. That's basically what I'm still trying to do as an adult actor."

He's lucky to have had his parents' support, both as a child and later in his adult ambitions to act -- "My parents have been my biggest allies," he says.

Sadly, his mother Charlotte was killed in a car crash in India two years ago. She had been on set for Band Of Brothers, but did not live to see her son's work come to fruition -- "and that is a real sadness," Lewis says, "but in the end, there is no right time for somebody to die. She may have lived to see my success, but then not seen me marry or become a father. It would have been as hard to lose her whenever she had died."

Wisely, following the tragedy, he took some time off: "You need time to reflect on things and to let them affect you. The temptation is to lose yourself in the work and to try to forget by running around playing other people, but I think that you also have to face up to it and to be simply yourself, too. That, I think, is healthy."

Caption: War and period pieces (clockwise from top left): Moral ambiguity in Warriors; friends, family and adultery in Hearts And Bones; putting on a brave face as Jeffrey Archer; Damian Lewis, Gina McKee and Rupert Graves in The Forsyte Saga.

Caption: Brothers in arms (clockwise from top left): Lewis' role in the epic Steven Spielberg / Tom Hanks co-production, Band Of Brothers, came out of the blue for the actor -- and he definitely made the most of it.