Acting The Hero

With little experience and an English accent honed at Eton, Damian Lewis clinched the lead role of American World War II hero Richard Winters in Steven Spielberg's TV epic Band Of Brothers. He tells Shoba Vazirani about making the leap from Hearts And Bones to Hollywood.

by Shoba Vazirani, Express Saturday Magazine, October 27, 2001

Damian Lewis isn't exactly a household name -- yet. In fact, other than the acclaimed Warriors and the first series of Hearts and Bones, he doesn't even have much TV experience, let alone high-profile movies.

Yet the 29-year-old-actor, who until now has more or less quietly got on with the task of perfecting his craft, mainly on stage, is set for international stardom.

He may have played Laertes in Ralph Fiennes' Hamlet on Broadway, and he may have been with the RSC for two years, but in the world of TV and film, like he himself says, "No one cares!"

Yet now he's likely to to head every casting director's wish list, and it probably won't be long before journalists are having to run the gauntlet of an entourage of agents to secure an interview.

It's all thanks to the epic "Band of Brothers," the most expensive TV series ever produced, and the leading role which Lewis cleverly managed to wrestle from his American counterparts.

He plays World War II hero, Richard Winters, who rose through the ranks from private to captain, leading US Army regiment Easy Company with incredible bravery.

It screened first in America, and began on BBC 2 four weeks ago, with late-evening repeats on BBC1.

Despite being shot mainly in Britain, at Hatfield Aerodrome, it is an American production and other actors could be forgiven for believing the role of Winters should have gone to an American. Even Lewis admits that the rest of the cast, which includes Friends' David Schwimmer, thought he had more experience than he actually had.

But when you hear Lewis slip into a perfect US accent, the one he adopts faultlessly throughout an amazing 10 hours of gripping drama, you can understand why he convinced co-executive producers Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg that he was perfect for the part.

"I think Spielberg, especially, is renowned for liking English actors," he says. "He likes our way of working, a certain Englishness that we might bring to parts.

"At the beginning they were determined to use as many English actors as possible, as they knew they were filming here and it'd save a lot of money, but it didn't work out that way. With me, Tom said, 'I just knew when I saw you.' He said he knew Winters well and I didn't look identical, but it didn't matter as I had qualities similar to him.

"For me, the test was meeting Winters himself, then watching the premiere of Band of Brothers with him and other veterans in Normandy in June. I was very nervous, but at the end of the screening they came up to me and told me I'd nailed him. I breathed a sigh of relief."

Meeting Lewis, it's good to see that this taste of working with the cream of the acting industry hasn't gone to his head. It's not that he's not ambitious -- he is -- but he remains down-to-earth while at the same time loving all the adulation being heaped on him.

Already US critics are raving about his performance, and as Band of Brothers takes hold on his home ground, he can expect more of the same. Refreshingly, he doesn't mind admitting it's the kind of attention he's dreamed about since he was a kid. "I've done Wogan in the mirror late at night when I can't get to sleep," he laughs.

Lewis says he was bitten by the acting bug when he was just eight. At 16, and still at school -- Eton, where he regularly took part in Gilbert & Sullivan productions -- he decided he'd act for a living.

His mother Charlotte, who sadly died in a car crash in February, worked at the Royal Court, and his father Watcyn took the children to the theatre when they were young. "The most exciting feeling was when the house lights went down and there's the last rustling of crisp packets. It was magical."

Lewis enrolled at London's Guildhall School of Drama and knew success was within his grasp. "I never imagined failing," he says.

Clinching the role of Winters took three auditions and four screen tests in London, and then a nail-biting trip to L.A. to meet Hanks and Spielberg in December 1999. "I made a really crap remark as I walked in," he reveals. "Tom went, 'Gee Damian, thanks for flying all the way from London, you must be tired. ...' And I said, 'Yeah, my shoulders are really stiff,' and there was this deathly hush! I thought, 'Oh, I've blown it!' Tom just said, 'OK, sit down, let's do the scene.' Afterwards, the producer said, 'Damian, great work, you've got nothing to worry about,' so then I went out drinking with a mate until 5 am."

Just three hours later, a hungover Lewis got a call from Spielberg's office asking him to meet the man himself at noon. "I had four showers and I was chucking coffee down," he recalls, "then I went in and met Steven and Tom. We just had a chat. Steven said his kid had a soccer match and we just talked about football. And Tom was going, 'My wife is fed up 'cos I'm supposed to be getting Christmas trees,' so it was all really normal. Then I was left with another of the producers, called Tony To, and one other guy that looked exactly like the pictures of Winters I'd seen. I thought, 'Oh damn, he's got it, but it's been a great weekend.'"

Minutes later, Lewis was put out of his misery when Tony said: "So Damian, how'd you like to go to boot camp in March?"

"I jumped up and kissed him and everyone in the room," says Lewis.

He was still making Hearts And Bones last year when the Spielberg machine sprang into action and he found himself reading Winter's journals and working out with a personal trainer three times a week. Then it was straight to boot camp.

The only downside is that his long-term romance with Ellie Garnett was a casualty of the 10-month shooting, although they've remained friends, and he is now in a new relationship with Channel 4 producer Katie Razzall.

Currently filming Granada's The Forsyte Saga in Manchester -- he stars as Soames, the role made famous by Eric Porter -- he's determined to relish his new-found glory. "Everything you do is a stepping stone to something bigger, but you have to be careful because if all you're worried about is stepping stones you never stick around to enjoy the moment," he says wisely.

"You see people who are in a hurry to get somewhere and they are just not having a good time. I used to be like that, and it's a killer. You have to really enjoy this, and not think, 'I wonder what this will lead to,' too much, which inevitably you do, lying awake at night and staring at the ceiling. ..."

Caption: Left: Damian (right) and Ron Livingston in Band Of Brothers. Right: filming The Forsyte Saga on location. Bottom: with Dervla Kirwan in Hearts And Bones.

Caption: Above: Damian (seated centre) in RSC's The Devil Is An Ass. Right: with girlfriend Katie Razzall at the Band Of Brothers premiere.

Callout: "Spielberg is renowned for liking English actors."