Helen McCrory
Actress, Mum and Philanthropist
Categories Charity Damian Lewis Personal and Family Life

Late actor Helen McCrory Supported Cornwall Family Through Cancer Tragedy

Helen’s Big Heart

by Sam Beamish | Cornwall Live | May 13, 2021

A close friend of the late Helen McCrory has told how the star supported her family through her daughter’s illness and death. Fiona Nash said the actor would do “anything for anyone” and was a “very kind and generous person”.

Fiona’s daughter Torie Benson died 10 years ago at age 30 due to cervical cancer.

To mark the anniversary of her death and raise money for the charity that supported her, Fiona’s 18-year-old son Toby Benson ran from Land’s End to The Lizard and back on Tuesday (May 11).

So far he has raised £15,500 for Marie Curie and is being backed by McCrory’s husband, actor Damian Lewis.

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Categories Damian Lewis Personal and Family Life Print Media Tributes

Damian Lewis On His Wife Helen McCrory

“I’ve never known anyone able to enjoy life as much”

by Damian Lewis | The Sunday Times | April 18, 2021

Photo by Dave M. Benett/Getty Images

The star, who has died of cancer at 52, was a brilliant actress and an even better person, writes her husband.

As I sit down to write this, I can hear Helen shouting from the bed, “Keep it short, Damian, it’s not about you.”

I’ll try, but on a weekend when the papers, rightly, will be paying their respects to the Duke of Edinburgh, thousands of others around the world have been remembering m’Duchess, my Little One, royalty in her own right. And I’d like to throw in my tuppence worth …

When I say “royalty”, I am of course referring to the esteem in which Helen is held in our business. Her nickname to many was Dame Helen (apologies, Dame Helen), and although we’ll never know now whether that would have become a reality, I think secretly, we do know.

Continue reading Damian Lewis On His Wife Helen McCrory

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Helen McCrory, versatile actress who dominated the stage and shone on screen in Peaky Blinders and The Queen – obituary

The Telegraph’s Charles Spencer put her in his ‘pantheon of actors whose name in the programme always creates the anticipation of pleasure’

Helen McCrory, who has died of cancer aged 52, made her name as a subtle and intelligent stage performer, and later bucked the trend that consigns actresses to oblivion in middle age, becoming one of Britain’s most sought-after television stars in her 40s.

In the first decade of the new millennium she was hailed as one of the most promising presences in British theatre. Writing in the Telegraph in 2002, Jasper Rees placed her in the tradition of Judi Dench, Zoë Wanamaker and Imelda Staunton as “the small, punchy actress with a voice that can coat a back wall in honey from 100 paces.”

Continue reading Helen McCrory, versatile actress who dominated the stage and shone on screen in Peaky Blinders and The Queen – obituary

Categories Damian Lewis Feed NHS Personal and Family Life Print Media Tributes

John Vincent, CEO of Leon Restaurants, Reflects On Helen McCrory

FeedNHS Partners

Helen McCrory  CREDIT: Andrew Crowley /Telegraph

In the last year, Helen McCrory became a close colleague as we worked alongside her, her husband, Damian Lewis, and actor Matt Lucas on the #FeedNHS campaign. At the height of the first lockdown we spoke nearly every day and served over a million meals to NHS workers on the frontline.

On Friday afternoon, I was in my office when I heard the news.

My immediate thought was, no, they’ve got that wrong. People must have confused her with someone else. Just the day before, I had been writing about Helen, Damian and Matt, for Letters From Lockdown, a compilation of notes to two children about people’s lives in the past year. How could it be that she had passed away? I was shocked.  

I didn’t know Helen was ill. I don’t know how long she was receiving treatment, nor what type of cancer she had. Part of me wondered if I should have known, if other people knew and I didn’t. Was there something I missed?

Categories Damian Lewis Feed NHS Print Media Tributes

‘In the last 12 months of her life, Helen McCrory used her power to help those who help us

In her final year, living with an illness she kept private, McCrory used her remaining energy to give back

Helen McCrory and Damian Lewis launched a project to provide NHS workers on the frontline with hot meals. Lewis had just halted production on Billions and flown back from New York for lockdown; McCrory had paused filming the sixth series of Peaky Blinders. Parents to two children, they could have been excused a rest. Instead the couple’s campaign #FeedNHS raised more than £1m.

When Lewis announced that his wife of 14 years had died, aged 52, “after an heroic battle with cancer”, that campaign took on an added poignancy: in her final year, living with an illness she kept private, McCrory used her remaining energy to give back.

I interviewed McCrory and Lewis about #FeedNHS exactly a year ago. They were in lockdown in Sudbury, Suffolk, with their children, Manon, 14, and Gulliver, 12, and sounded less like television’s most eminent couple and more like professional fundraisers.

Continue reading ‘In the last 12 months of her life, Helen McCrory used her power to help those who help us