Author: helenistic

Categories Five Gold Rings Interviews Medea Peaky Blinders Print Media

Helen McCrory: ‘There is this assumption that a woman my age can’t be sexy’

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On stripping for action at 46 and giving husband Damian Lewis a run for his money

 

By  Kirsty Lang | September 20, 2014 | Daily Mail

Helen McCrory

‘I have only just started doing sex scenes. When I was younger, I would always say no to taking my clothes off. Now I’m 46, I know what the camera is doing,’ said Helen McCrory

‘I love the fact that I get to wear loads of kohl eyeliner, a big hat and shoot a gun,’ says Helen McCrory, talking about her role in the BBC2 series Peaky Blinders.

She plays the matriarchal Aunt Polly in a Twenties Birmingham gangster family and wields a long hatpin with lethal consequences.

It seems only fair after all the fun her actor husband Damian Lewis had playing a war hero-turned-terrorist in Homeland.

Tough, confident and uncompromising in her choice of work, McCrory, like Aunt Polly, is a force to be reckoned with.

She has won numerous awards during an impressive stage and screen career (her credits include Harry Potter, The Queen and several high-profile TV dramas, including Charles II and North Square) and easily holds her own as one half of that formidable partnership with Lewis.

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Categories Interviews Medea Print Media

Helen McCrory: A Drama Queen Slays Them with Her Greek Turn

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As a child she sliced a beehive in half with a machete; now the feisty actress is wowing theatre-goers with her gory portrayal of the murderous matriarch Medea

August 17, 2014 | The Sunday Times

04 April 2011 – Helen McCrory attends the grand opening of Harry Potter: The Exhibition on April 4, 2011, at the Discovery Times Square Exposition Center, in New York, NY.

Tickets for Benedict Cumberbatch’s Hamlet may have sold out in record time last week, but Helen McCrory’s Medea is the theatrical event of the moment. Avid theatre-goers who take in both may find the Shakespeare a little pale after McCrory’s “stunning” performance in Euripides’s blood-soaked tale of a woman who wreaks revenge on her faithless husband by killing their children. “It’s the reverse of Hamlet because he spends three hours worrying and does nothing, whereas Medea takes an hour and 15, massacres the whole f****** stage and walks off,” McCrory said before the production opened. “But it’s great because she uses every shred of femininity that she has to do it and she also has the complexity of guilt.”

McCrory added that Medea was “one of the greatest parts you’ll ever play” and the critics seem united in lauding this as her own best performance. Maxie Szalwinska, theatre reviewer for The Sunday Times, said McCrory “ascends to greatness” in the classical role. “She’s one of those actors you can sense has a great performance in them if a director can unlock it. This is McCrory’s,” Szalwinska said.

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Categories Personal and Family Life Print Media

What I see in the Mirror: Helen McCrory

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My eyes are large, with dark circles – as the Spanish say, “God put her eyes in with a sooty thumb”‘

Rosanna Greenstreet | August 2, 2014 | The Guardian
The joy of being optically challenged but with a vivid imagination is that, although a blurry, fuzzy, hazy blob stands before me, I merrily assume that I look exactly as I did the last time I could focus. At about 19. Consequently, I’m quite cheerful when I leave home, and have no desire to wear contacts. If I was interested in reality, I would not have become an actor.

My hair is wild, Janis Joplin crossed with Jimi Hendrix. There’s a nice man – Matthew – in Percy Street who tames it for me. But if there’s no time, I’ll happily pop on a wig or hat or, if it’s not too hot, both.

My eyes are large, with dark circles – as the Spanish say, “God put her eyes in with a sooty thumb.” Teeth, nondescript. Lips, full – less so now, which allows me to wear red lipstick without looking like a sex worker.

I’m small, but have always thought of myself as tall. I stand straight, with one of my two children welded to each hip. I am strong – years of ballet as a child have assured that my legs would not look out of place in a football squad lineup.

I’m a mixture of my father and my mother inside and out – Welsh and Scottish with a dash of English.

My best feature is my smile, and I suppose it will remain my best feature for ever. After all, a happy, toothless, withered old crone smiling at you is better than a grumpy, toothless, withered old crone snarling at you.

 Helen McCrory is in Medea at the National Theatre until 4 September.