Damian Lewis

Actor

  • Born: February 11, 1971
  • Place of Birth: London, England

Contribution: Damian Lewis is an Emmy and Golden Globe Award–winning British actor, best known for his starring roles in the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers (2001) and the Showtime series Homeland (2011–14) and Billions (2016-2023).

Background

Damian Watcyn Lewis was born on February 11, 1971, in London, England. He was raised in the city’s affluent St. John’s Wood neighborhood. His father, J. Watcyn Lewis, was an insurance broker, and his mother, Charlotte Mary Bowater, served on the board of London’s Royal Court Theatre before she died in a car accident in India in 2001. Lewis has a sister, Amanda, and two brothers, William and Gareth.

Lewis attended Ashdown House, a boarding school located in East Sussex County, England. There, he started acting for the first time, starring in the school’s annual Gilbert and Sullivan productions. He also participated in sports. After graduating from Ashdown, Lewis won acceptance to Eton College, near Windsor, one of the most prestigious all-male preparatory schools in the world. At Eton, he continued to act in school productions and formed a theater company with several of his classmates. He remained just as active in sports and was a member of the school’s varsity soccer, cricket, golf, and tennis teams.

In 1990, Lewis gave up his sporting ambitions to study at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. His fellow pupils included such future movie stars as Ewan McGregor, Joseph Fiennes, and Jude Law. While still at school, Lewis starred in a production of the Patrick Hamilton play Rope at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre. He graduated from Guildhall in 1993.

Career

Lewis started out doing theater and performed in a number of plays with the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, the Almeida Theatre Company, and the Royal Shakespeare Company. He landed roles in such productions as Romeo and Juliet and The School for Wives before making his West End debut as Laertes in a 1995 Almeida Theatre production of Hamlet, starring Ralph Fiennes in the titular role. He also forayed into television and film; after appearing in the Rik Mayall–helmed TV movie Micky Love in 1993, he guest starred in the BBC series Poirot in 1995 and made his feature-film debut opposite Pierce Brosnan in Robinson Crusoe (1997).

In 1999, following a run as Don John in a Royal Shakespeare Company production of Much Ado about Nothing, Lewis costarred in the BAFTA Award–winning BBC miniseries Warriors, later retitled Peacekeepers when released in the United States, about a British humanitarian mission to war-torn Bosnia. Lewis followed that with a leading role as schoolteacher Mark Rose in the BBC drama series Hearts and Bones in 2000.

Lewis went on to beat out hundreds of actors for the role of US Army officer Richard “Dick” Winters in HBO’s ten-part World War II miniseries Band of Brothers (2001), which was coproduced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks. Based on the book of the same name by the late historian Stephen Ambrose, the series chronicles the experiences of a real-life parachute regiment, the 101st Airborne Division, during World War II. Band of Brothers, which cost an estimated $125 million to produce, received widespread critical praise and went on to win a slew of awards, including six Emmys and one Golden Globe. Lewis garnered a Golden Globe nomination for his memorable portrayal of the enigmatic Major Winters, who served as the series’ central character.

Lewis won strong critical notice for his next role, as the wealthy and pompous London solicitor Soames Forsyte in The Forsyte Saga (2002), an adaptation of the John Galsworthy trilogy of the same name, which aired on ITV and PBS in 2002. He would reprise the role of Forsyte for the second installment of the saga, which premiered in 2003. The same year, Lewis appeared in his first lead role in a feature film: Lawrence Kasdan’s Dreamcatcher (2003), which was based on Stephen King’s 2001 horror novel. He then gave an emotionally powerful performance in Lodge Kerrigan’s acclaimed indie drama Keane (2004), in which he plays a mentally unstable Manhattan man in search of his missing daughter.

Lewis played American characters in a handful of other films, most notably in Lasse Hallstrom’s An Unfinished Life (2005), which starred Robert Redford and Morgan Freeman, before winning the lead role in the NBC crime drama series Life (2007–9). On that show, Lewis played Charlie Crews, a Los Angeles police detective who spent twelve years in prison for a crime he did not commit. The show was well received by critics but was canceled after two seasons, due in part to the 2007–8 Writers Guild of America strike. In 2009, Lewis returned to the stage in a London revival of Molière’s comedy The Misanthrope. He starred in American Buffalo in London in 2015 and in a 2017 revival of The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? In 2024, he joined a stellar cast of film and theatre actors in Regent's Park Open Air Theatre in central London for a July 8 production of Shakespeare for Every Day of the Year, which is based on Allie Esiri's poetry anthology of the same title.

In 2011, Lewis began appearing in the lead role of US Marine Sergeant Nicholas Brody on Showtime’s thriller series Homeland. The show, starring Claire Danes as a bipolar CIA operative, became a major critical and commercial success and won several awards, including Emmy and Golden Globe Awards for best drama series. For his complex portrayal of the conflicted Brody, a former prisoner of war who is suspected of spying for al-Qaeda terrorists, Lewis received both an Emmy Award (2012) and a Golden Globe Award (2013) for best actor in a drama series. He left the show in 2014.

Lewis starred in several television miniseries in the mid-to-late 2010s. In Wolf Hall (2015), he played Henry VIII opposite Mark Rylance's Thomas Cromwell and Claire Foy's Anne Boleyn. The series won the 2016 Golden Globe Award for best limited television series, and Lewis was nominated for several awards for his supporting role, including a Golden Globe, an Emmy, and a Satellite Award. That same year, he also starred as US Civil War general William T. Sherman in To Appomattox. Between 2016 and 2023, he played billionaire hedge fund king Bobby Axelrod on Showtime's series Billions.

During the second half of the 2010s, he also appeared in several feature films. These include Queen of the Desert (2015), Our Kind of Traitor (2016), Run This Town (2016), and Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood (2019), which was written and directed by Quentin Tarantino.

In early 2019, Lewis announced the launch of his independent film, television, and theater production company, Rookery Productions. Lewis started the company with the intent of producing and directing projects across genres. He served as executive producer of the BAFTA-nominated miniseries A Spy Among Friends (2022) and the 2024 film The Radleys. He also starred in both productions.

Lewis is also a musician. He released an album, Mission Creep, in 2023.

Impact

In the 2000s, Lewis became part of a growing trend in Hollywood of British actors playing American characters. After showcasing his uncanny American accent in Band of Brothers, Lewis was cast almost exclusively in American roles, as he won an instant stateside following and earned critical comparisons to such screen legends as Jimmy Stewart and Steve McQueen. He played the latter in Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood. Lewis’s fame reached even greater heights with his multi-award-winning turn on the runaway hit series Homeland, which received enthusiastic support from none other than US president Barack Obama, who cited the show as his favorite on television. President Obama invited Lewis and his wife to the White House as official dinner guests in March 2012.

Personal Life

In 2007, Lewis married actress Helen McCrory, best known for her role as Narcissa Malfoy in the Harry Potter film series (2001–11). They have a daughter, Manon, and a son, Gulliver. McCrory died of cancer on April 16, 2021.

Bibliography

"Damian Lewis." Broadway World, 2024, www.broadwayworld.com/people/Damian-Lewis/. Accessed 23 Sept. 2024.

"Damian Lewis." London Theatre, www.londontheatre.co.uk/stars-on-stage/damian-lewis. Accessed 23 Sept. 2024.

"Damian Lewis (I)." IMDb, 2024, www.imdb.com/name/nm0507073/. Accessed 23 Sept. 2024.

"Damian Lewis Opens Up About the 'Difficulties' of Going from an Actor to Musician." Virgin Radio UK, 7 July 2024, virginradio.co.uk/entertainment/150819/damian-lewis-opens-up-about-the-difficulties-of-going-from-an-actor-to-musician. Accessed 25 Sept. 2024.

Lawless, Jill. “Homeland Doesn’t Need Nicholas Brody Says Damian Lewis.” Independent. Independent.co.uk, 22 May 2013. Web. 24 July 2013.

Lewis, Damian. “A World War II Soldier Enters the Post-Iraq Age.” Interview by Jeremy Egner. New York Times. New York Times, 9 Dec. 2011. Web. 24 July 2013.

McLean, Craig. “Soldiering On: Damian Lewis in Homeland.” Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group, 4 Feb. 2012. Web. 24 July 2013.

Preston, John. “Damian Lewis Interview.” Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group, 18 Apr. 2011. Web. 24 July 2013.

Smith, Russell Scott. “An Officer and a Gentleman.” Us Weekly 15 Oct. 2001: 42–43. Print.

White, Peter. “‘Billions’ Star Damian Lewis Launches Rookery Productions & Plans to Develop & Direct Film, TV & Theater Projects.” Deadline, 1 Mar. 2019, deadline.com/2019/03/damian-lewis-rookery-productions-1202567744/. Accessed 4 Nov. 2019.