by Helenistic | helen-mccrory.com | May 11, 2005
Edith Hall (KCL) talked to actor, Helen McCrory about her role in the critically acclaimed production of Medea at the National Theatre in 2014. Damian, featuring his American Buffalo mustache was also in the audience.
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In a promo for Season 2 of Showtime’s “Penny Dreadful,” Helen McCrory is shown reclining in a bathtub filled with blood, eerily singing a variation of an old English folk ballad known as “The Unquiet Grave.”
“That was at 6 o’clock in the morning in a bright studio, and it wasn’t my finest hour,” says the actress, “but apparently a cracked voice is what they wanted.”
She then jokingly adds that she floated in the tub, “So I must be a witch.”
Continue reading ‘Penny Dreadful’s’ Helen McCrory talks hunting the hunters in new season
She grew up a ‘feral, compulsive liar’… perfect training for an actress. She’s at her most relaxed either asleep backstage during the interval or talking to strangers – which is why husband Damian Lewis has to remind her: ‘You’re not the Queen!’
What is your earliest memory?
Walking along a path near our home in Cameroon with my mum and my brother and my labrador Jasper. I am looking down at my knees, which were very dark at the time because they were covered in dust. I lived in Africa until I was six or seven, in Cameroon and Tanzania. It was absolutely beautiful, a great place to grow up.
What sort of child were you?
A feral, compulsive liar. Every country we went to, I would make up these fantastical stories about who I was and what my parents did, and just pray to God that my father’s posting would come around quickly before I was rumbled in the playground. I would say things like, ‘My father works for the Queen,’ which was based in truth as he worked for the Foreign Office, but I was just such a liar. I suppose in the end it was good practice for being an actress.
By Luaine Lee | April 22, 2015 | Tribune News Service
“My dad’s got a Glaswegian accent,” she says, which is something of a surprise. She nods in agreement. “I sound like I come from Suffolk!” she adds, pronouncing it ‘Suff-auk’ – for emphasis – as if she were schooled at Eton.
She continues, keeping the oh-so-posh voice on for comedy effect. “People are like, ‘Oh, hello, where do you come from?’ And I say, ‘I come from West Africa, actually!’ But you can’t tell.”
Confused? Well, that’s just what it’s like meeting McCrory, a mistress of the deadpan, who is as entertaining off-screen as she is on. Her father is indeed from Glasgow, a former diplomat whose own father was a welder.