Helen McCrory: ‘Move over, darling’

You hear Helen McCrory before you see her, which I imagine is often the case, as she is very loud. ­Hidden behind the door of a bedroom in Claridge’s, she is peeling off a final layer of clothing for Style’s photographer. “Well, it is the end of the day, darling,” comes the boom. “Sod it.” Clever, confident and a little bit camp, McCrory, 45, is considered by many to be the finest ­actress of her generation — but today she is simply in the mood to hold court and show some skin. Won’t Damian Lewis, her superstar husband, mind her getting her kit off, asks a member of the crew? “No, no, no,” she says. “Damian is going, ‘F****** yes!’ ”

No doubt. McCrory’s considerable sex appeal continues to gurgle away as we head to the bar. She is only 5ft 4in and dressed like a weird music-hall gangster in a billowing dress, tuxedo jacket and trilby. Yet she is captivating, her coal-black gaze shifting from playful to stern with her mood, as a pair of insane cheekbones flex like children’s fists under her eyes. “I never wanted to be the most popular girl at school,” she announces stagily at one point, and I wonder if this sort of confidence can rub people up the wrong way. Perhaps. I suspect it is also required to be the best at what you do.

Ask any casting director, agent or — for that matter — ­actor who they really rate and it won’t be long before McCrory’s name comes up. By rights, she should be stupidly famous, but she is picky about work and unbothered by fame, so it’s Chekhov not chick flicks for her. The good news is that when she does crop up in mainstream fare (a Scorsese film, say, or Skyfall) you know that, by and large, it’s going to be good. This autumn, she is blasting across screens in BBC2’s new costume drama Peaky Blinders, playing the Brummie matriarch of a 1920s gang of razor-blade-wielding thugs. It’s a classic McCrory turn: warm but vaguely terrifying.

For all her unwillingness to be a tacky celeb, she still finds paparazzi on her north London stoop. For the past six years she has been married to Damian Lewis, flame-haired hero of Homeland and father to her two kids. Since the show became a monster hit, winning him an Emmy and scores of fans, the couple have drifted into the limelight, being shot for Vogue together or hitting the red carpet. Somehow they manage to pull off looking classy but totally hot for each other, a triumph at any age, let alone post-40 (so I’m told).

It’s strange, as McCrory — an unconventional beast — never thought she was the marrying kind. “Christ, no,” she says, having ordered a virgin cocktail and found a banquette. “Even when I got married I was quite surprised, but I think it’s wonderful.” She sounds genuinely moved. “It’s made me so, so happy and made me feel very different. Some people say, ‘What’s a ring on a finger — we’ve been together for years, I wouldn’t bother.’ But, for me, I do feel more…” She trails off.

More settled? She balks. “There’s nothing settling about it, let me tell you. Our marriage is like Tasmanian devils. Different countries, different jobs, children and houses, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I have married a kindred spirit, and therefore things that were frightening before are definitely an adventure. It’s just more fun.” Apparently, Lewis is also quite alpha. “I’d kill a calm man.” Would a calm man kill you? “Yes, that’s probably more accurate. I’m aggressive-aggressive. There’s nothing passive-aggressive about me.” She thinks for a moment. “Or Damian.”

I wonder if this is why they still seem so into each other. “Well…” she says, then stops herself. Go on, I say. “I was going to say that sexiness is in the crotch of the beholder,” she says, laughing. “I know why I find, for instance, my husband attractive, but I don’t know why somebody else finds him attractive.” Why do you, then? “He makes me laugh more than anybody else.” So attraction moved from the crotch to the brain? “It always does, doesn’t it? It’s certainly the hottest part of the body.”

FYI, her body is superhot, which I guess doesn’t hurt. She says it’s down to genetics and a bit of Bikram. “Well, I say I don’t exercise, but with Damian, when we go to the theatre, we’ll walk into Soho, have an evening out and we’ll walk home. Or we cycle everywhere or run around with the kids.” I saw your trip to the playground was covered in the tabloids yesterday. “Did they?” she says. “What a strange thing. Who would care?” She says it has changed “a lot” since Homeland, as Lewis spends five months of the year away filming. “He wears a red carnation so I can recognise him at the Tube station.”

McCrory once said that younger men always go for her. Is the fact that Lewis is three years younger than her significant? At this, she draws herself up into full theatrical diva mode, ­booming from beneath her trilby: “I’ve certainly never discussed the age difference with my husband, darling. I can’t ­believe you brought it up. As far as he’s concerned, he’s got a child bride. He’s very lucky that my embassy hasn’t been in touch with him.”

All the other drinkers in Claridge’s look totally scandalised as she laughs. To be honest, she reckons there’s a fair amount of illusion in what people see of her and Lewis, anyway. “I think we’re in a very privileged position of both being made to look the best we can on some occasions. It’s much easier to be nice to your wife when she’s all done up and smiling at you than when she’s knackered at the end of the day — which I also am.”

McCrory was born in London in 1968: her father was a diplomat, so she spent her early years crisscrossing the globe before landing at a boarding school in Hertfordshire at 13. Here, she enjoyed “the occasional Silk Cut and wrote racy things in my diary”, but was never a rebel. I suspect, even before she got into Drama Centre London, it was clear she was something special. When she graduated, she was signed on the spot. “My agent was a man called Julian Belfrage. Daniel Day-Lewis, Rufus Sewell and myself were his last three clients.” She credits Belfrage with giving her the foundations for how to run a career. For example, she was offered a West End lead straight out of drama school. “He said, ‘Over my dead body are you doing that. If you’re not good in this, you’ll never recover from the reviews. The answer is no.’ Proper good, old-fashioned agenting. It’s bizarre now. It’s, like, ‘Haven’t you done a reality-TV programme at 22? You’ll never make it.’ ”

As an ingénue, she turned down action-movie chick stuff in favour of Ibsen. “I could have had an entirely different career on a spaceship, and probably have got paid a lot more money. But I used to look at the scripts and think, ‘Would I watch this film?’ That’s really my marker. I’m very selfish as far as ambition is concerned. I like doing what I like watching… Or might like watching.” Her closest brush with the mega-league came when she agreed to play Bellatrix Lestrange in the Harry Potter films, but Helena Bonham Carter had to take over when she became pregnant.

I doubt she loses sleep over it. Many actresses have terrifying egos, but McCrory has a tremendous sense of self. Demanding and single-minded, she can be hard work, I’ll bet, but she doesn’t seem needy or nuts. Though she would claim the opposite — I wonder if this is why she appears to have life so sussed? “I’m not confident,” she reckons. “I just think I’m un-neurotic. I don’t bounce out of bed in the morning, wink at the mirror, and go, ‘Hello, you, looking hot again today’, I just don’t particularly look in the mirror. The truth is, those times when you do start to think about yourself, you do lose confidence. Everybody has enormous self-doubt, but I’ve never compared myself to anybody else.”

Lewis is a lucky man. Just as well he likes a fight, though.