The Future's Bright

He's a wanted man in Hollywood and is rumoured to be dating an A-list actress. Eve sent Gaby Roslin to meet Damian Lewis, the actor championing the right of redheads to be sexy as hell -- and she wasn't disappointed.

by Gaby Roslin, Eve, July 2004

Our crew are busily attending to their jobs -- clothes are being hung up, hair and make-up products laid out and lighting positioned -- when Damian Lewis saunters into the loft-style studio we've hired for the afternoon. I step up to greet him and, as he plants a firm kiss on my cheek, a hush falls in the room while we all take him in.

Damian's eyes flick around the room, he treats us all to a flash of his fiercely blue eyes and that lopsided grin, "Hello, Damian Lewis."

The crew's temporary paralysis isn't just spurred on by the fact that our star has arrived. It's the hair. Gloriously bright, it's completely captivating. "Redheads are the smallest minority in the world," he mock-seriously tells me. "There isn't an army of redheads around, so there are even fewer redheads acting. If someone thinks I have the right qualities to play a romantic lead, then I have to fight to keep him redheaded because there's a prejudice against us being sexy or attractive."

If it's true there there is a feeling it's somehow wrong -- or "kinky" as he puts it -- to fancy a redhead, Damian Lewis is the antidote. Friendly, easy-going, knee-tremblingly handsome and devastatingly charming, he isn't at all detached or cool as you might expect from the man who played the uptight Soames in ITV1's The Forsyte Saga -- a presumption that's backed up by his upbringing, too.

An old Etonion -- something that he quickly brushes over -- Damian went to the Guildlhall School of Music and Drama in London's Barbican, which he describes as: "A concrete compound with a collegiate feel that I thought was sterile at first. But my year had Joe Fiennes, and Ewan McGregor was in the year above," he adds proudly. Graduating in 1993, he then scored a string of classical theatre roles as Romeo, Hamlet and Laertes. So yes, on paper he does scream classical actor, even though he's more laid-back lad than posh and plummy.

Speaking of flesh, he's quite happy exposing his. Not surprising, considering the shape he's in. (Small-hipped, expanding to wide shoulders, I note, just in case you wondered.) Stripping off as we get ready for the shoot, he gathers three of our female crew about him to canvas opinions on what he should wear. This is a man comfortable in his own skin but, rightly or wrongly, he does have a rather debonair image. I decide to catch him off guard and put it to him that he's not the sort of man you'd expect to hear went to a friend's wedding and fell into a pond right up to his middle, then returned to the wedding marquee sporting a wet-shirt-and-pond-weed Mr. Darcy look.

I've stumped him. Blushing, he pauses for a while, obviously racking his brains. "I haven't said that anywhere else, have I? You've actually spoken to someone about that, haven't you?" I confess I have. "That's funny," he laughs at my having found him out. "I'd had a bit to drink. The wedding was in the countryside in this family's beautiful garden. They had lit-up trees and big rhododendrons and all that sort of stuff -- it looked beautiful -- but it just meant where you were walking was completely dark. At least that's my excuse. It was actually tied in with a massive row I was having with someone at the time. I went stomping off drunkenly to look for her and I just walked into a pond up to my middle. Thankfully, I was drunk enough to go back into the marquee completely soaked and just grin at everyone."

Down to earth he is, but spend a short time with Damian Lewis and you realise he says nothing lightly. Every one of his replies is considered and deliberate. In response to each of my questions he pauses, considering its whole meaning before carefully answering. You get the impression he would never say anything he didn't mean. "I think my biggest fault is that I try to control environments that I'm in," he confessions. "I think I suffer from that in life generally. Anything I've done must be seen to be the appropriate thing, the right thing, the thing that people admire or respect."

"When big decisions present themselves," he continues, "I prevaricate. It takes me forever to come to a decision because I have to absolutely thrash it out in every possible way. I do it with myself, and I'll definitely use friends and family as sounding boards. I find decision-making utterly debilitating because it takes me such a long time. And it stultifies me. I can't function properly when I've got huge choices to make."

That burdensome thoughtful process could be why he's rarely put a foot wrong in terms of work. After that start in theatre he caught the public's attention in BBC TV's highly acclaimed Warriors, in 1999, playing a soldier serving in war-torn Bosnia. In Hearts and Bones he starred with Dervla Kirwan, Amanda Holden and Sarah Parish, and more recently he played Soames in The Forsyte Saga remakes. But it was the role of Major Winters in Steven Spielberg's TV epic Band of Brothers, in 2001, that turned him from home-gown talent to Hollywood hottie.

It was after three months and three auditions that he won the part of Winters, and was flown from LA to meet "Steven and Tom" as he calls them (that's Mr. Spielberg and Mr. Hanks to you and me). So successful was his American accent in the series that, even now in interviews, US journalists are surprised to discover that he is, in fact, English.

"I am just beginning to understand how lucky I am to be able to do an American accent. I never considered it a skill or an extra; it was just another voice that you can do when you're a kid and you're screwing around," he grins. That "lucky" talent for the accent led to a role in the movie Dreamcatcher, an $80million adaptation of the Stephen King novel and, though it didn't storm the box office, since then the film offers have steadily flowed in. In the near future we'll see him in the Martin Scorsese-produced film Brides, in which he plays another American, and in An Unfinished Life, alongside Jennifer Lopez, Morgan Freeman and Robert Redford. "There were moments when I was with Robert thinking, 'This is unbelievable, I'm acting with Robert Redford -- he's a screen legend -- this is great!'" he enthuses.

"I always wanted to be an actor," he continues. "I didn't know until I was 16 that I was actually going to do it, pursue it professionally and really have a crack at it. But my parents were lovely and liberal and supportive and said: 'Go for it. We'll support that decision.' This may sound pretentious," he apologises, "but it seemed inconceivable, really, that I would do anything else, other than what I'm doing. I would be crap at anything else."

Born in London, and brought up in affluent St John's Wood, Damian is the son of a successful reinsurance broker Watcyn, his late mother Charlotte's second husband. Her first husband died when Damian's sister Amanda was three and brother William was one. "I grew up with my parents always saying, 'We love you whatever, but you'll only disappoint yourself if you don't do the best you can.' I can't shake that off. That's at the root of my work ethic," he explains stretching his lean frame out on the sofa we're sharing.

As we talk more about our families, I realise that no only do we share a west London upbringing, but that we have another share link -- the loss of our mothers. Dropping his eyes, Damian pauses and then quietly explains his mum was killed in a car crash in India in 2001. "I got a phonecall in the middle of the night, and went into shock and stayed there for a year. Mum took so much pride in my success. I just wish she could have seen more of it," he says, before adding, "Actually, I probably don't want to talk about it much," and excuses himself for a moment.

Despite the tragedy, Damian's family remain close. This summer he plans to star in and produce a film with his younger brother Gareth, a scriptwriter and director. The film is called Shakespeare's Cake. "I'm supposed to be a hitman who unwittingly becomes the village baker. Dark comedy you know," he smiles.

So, with his film career going up a gear, could he imagine moving to LA full-time? "It would be difficult for me emotionally to leave London forever, being very much a Londoner and family-orientated," he answers, thoughtfully. "I like my friends and all of that sort of thing. I know this sounds a little self-righteous," he says, apologising for his view for the umpteenth time, "but there is something displacing about just always going off to the next thing on your own, without anyone you know. You have to be good socially or you have to be very self-contained and very happy with your own company, because it can be rather a lonely existence. So being at home is great."

"When I've been in London and I'm about to fly off to another film set, there is a moment when I think, 'Why can't I just be here? Why don't I set up my own theatre company? Why don't I live in London and be in the town I grew up in and live here for a bit and enjoy it? Have a steady girlfriend, get all my friends round for dinner parties?' That does sound quite fun to me."

But then, he admits, he is still too ambitious for that. He once said he thought it was too early in his career to turn down work "in order to be around for other people." Does he think that now? "I'm ambitious in the best sense of the word," he answers. "I'm ambitious for myself. Not in a comparative sense with others, not in a competitive way with others. I'm just ambitious for myself for me to be the best I can."

As he's brought up the girlfriend subject, it seems the right time to ask. Here goes ...

"There's been a lot written about you and Kristen Davis, star of Sex And The City. Are you seeing each other?" He smirks, laughs and shakes his head. "No. I'm totally and utterly single. Yes, we're mates. We've emailed and chatted to each other -- but I've only met her two or three times."

And if his fierce ambition means there isn't a constant companion in his life since splitting with Channel 4 news producer Katie Razzall, then he's determined to enjoy himself. "I have tremendous fun. But I know fun and profound happiness are probably two different things. I really believe that true happiness comes through actually denying yourself things. At some point one's ability to commit to something -- for example relationships, or a cause, or a job -- and to focus single-mindedly on one thing will give you a profounder experience of life. What that means is that you have to deny yourself trappings and temptations elsewhere in order to just focus on one thing." Smiling and fixing me with that famous lopsided grin, he finishes: "I don't do that denial thing at all well. But I suspect that is the way to be truly happy."