Cue Jumper

Actor Damian Lewis has parachuted to the front of Spielberg's line.

Tattler, September 2001

"Get outta here, you're too good," chuckled Tom Hanks when Damian Lewis finished reading for the lead in Band of Brothers (a 10-part BBC series produced by Hanks and Spielberg, out in October). Damian celebrated late into the night -- even though the part was not yet in the bag. The next morning, after just three hours' sleep, he went to meet Steven Spielberg. This was daunting, not least because the last Hanks-Spielberg military collaboration was the Oscar-winning Saving Private Ryan. After four showers to erase any smell of alcohol, Damian found himself chatting with the Hollywood heavyweights. "I lived in Hampstead for five years -- maybe we know people in common," said Spielberg. And they did: Ralph Fiennes. Damian had played Laertes to Fiennes's Hamlet. "I saw that on Broadway -- you were very good," chortled a bearded Hanks (he was filming Castaway). With the role confirmed, Damian leapt up and embraced all present.

The tough part was the next 10 months of filming, with boot camp and a personal trainer making his "whole body feel like a trampoline." Damian plays war-hero Major Dick Winters, who led an elite US Army corps as it parachuted into France on D-Day. Damian wanted to sound exactly like the Major so he memorised tapes that Winters, now in his 80s, sent him. "I didn't want anyone saying, 'Gee, doesn't the Brit do a good accent.' I wanted them not even to notice." Damian is a motorbike-riding Old Etonian who is still rather proud of having "sung quite nicely" as a treble in Gilbert and Sullivan productions at school -- something he no longer needs to put on his CV.