Helen McCrory enjoying her ‘golden period’

“Every culture and every generation is different, and that’s fascinating to me. And I think that part of my love for acting is also the research of it. I love researching all,” she said.

Though McCrory spent most of her career on the London stage, people know her as Narcissa Malfoy from three of the “Harry Potter” films, from “Skyfall,” “Hugo” and soon from Showtime’s “Penny Dreadful,” which returns May 3.

Those who admire her TV work — from “Anna Karenina” to “Life” — might be astonished by her transformation in “Penny Dreadful,” in which she plays the fatal nemesis of the show’s heroine. “For this, my research is all the gothic literature I’ve been reading for it, and reading about witchcraft and occultism,” she says.

Married to actor Damian Lewis and the mother of a daughter, 8, and a son, 7, McCrory says traveling taught her not to fear change. “It made me realize that change is inevitable, and I think there’s something very relaxing and releasing about that. Even as an adult, at the moment we’re definitely in a ‘golden period,’ my husband and I, and we know that that, too, will change. ‘This, too will pass, and so enjoy it.’”

Her peripatetic childhood also fortified her understanding of others. “I think it taught me about the hardships that people go through. I don’t think I take things for granted.

“And I think also,” she says with a nod, “I have a need for adventure. I’m happiest when I’ve got a plane ticket. I’m really happy when it’s a plane ticket for all of us and it’s a new script and what’s about to come: anticipation, adventure.”

It was a bit of a miracle when she and Lewis found themselves acting in Showtime projects at approximately the same time. He was filming “Homeland,” while she was starting “Penny Dreadful.” Though they were momentarily on the same continent, she was in Los Angeles while he was in New York.

“When we accept jobs, we discuss it, because we need to. We have two small children, and our family is very important to us,” she says. “This is actually the first time neither of us have been in the country with children, for work. When it comes to roles, occasionally we discuss them, though very rarely. Usually I’m completely surprised by what he’s doing because we don’t really talk about it at home,” says McCrory, who’s wearing a grayish navy dress.

Choosing to be an actress can be an ambivalent decision, but for McCrory it was a revelation. “I was singing Mozart’s ‘Requiem’ when I was 14 at the Royal Albert Hall, and I realized in that moment that even though I was singing as loudly as I could, I couldn’t hear my voice. And all I could hear was Mozart’s ‘Requiem,’ and it was the most astounding thing. And that’s when I realized I wanted to perform because I realized I would never be an original artist, but I could interpret, and that was as close to great art as I could ever get.”

While that proved a moment of clarity, two minutes later she was to experience a moment of humiliation that was to last for years.

“Somebody behind me said, ‘You’ve got legs like Jabba the Hutt.’ And that made me never show my legs until I wore shorts for the first time three years after I got married. Amazing the things you remember from childhood.”

McCrory likes being challenged by roles she thinks are beyond her. “I think every actor fears being bad. Every actor fears, there are scenes you come off and you think, ‘I was not truthful. I couldn’t find it in that moment. I couldn’t. I didn’t.’ And maybe the audience won’t catch it, and maybe the camera doesn’t catch it, and it could be your best scene in the film. But YOU know. I used to reconcile that when I was younger with an extraordinary amount of preparation.”

But that has changed. “I think the older I get, actually I do it with even less preparation, and the hardest thing I think is leaving yourself alone as an actor and trusting yourself, and just walking on the stage. It’s a cliché of every actor that the matinee when they were hung over was their best performance. And of course, because they didn’t try. And it was effortless.”