Category: Interviews

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Helen McCrory Interview: Woman & Home

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The Real Me

by Victoria Young | Woman & Home | Autumn, 2014

Helen McCrory talks to Victoria Young about feminism, marriage to a sex symbol – and being a gypsy at heart.

Actress Helen McCrory, 46, has played everyone from Medea to Cherie Blair as well as Polly Gray in Peaky Blinders. She’s married to actor Damian Lewis. They live in London and have two children, Manon, eight, and Gulliver, seven.

I grew up in Africa because my father was a diplomat. So I was lucky enough to grow up in a world without advertising. As a result, I’ve never judged myself on what I was supposed to look like. It’s good and bad. When it came to filming the second series of Peaky Blinders, I decided “I want Polly to look rougher, she should look haggard, life beaten, absolutely exhausted.” I then saw the first episode and remembered the adage, “Be careful what you wish for.”

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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 Interviews Medea Print Media

Helen McCrory Interview:  ‘Medea is one of the greatest parts you’ll ever play as an actress’

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The ‘Medea’ actress talks marriage, playing the female Hamlet and her craving for comedy

by Daisy Bowie | Time Out London | July 15, 2014

Helen McCrory
©Richard Hubert Smith

Over a lengthy career, Helen McCrory has played villains (Narcissa Malfoy in the Harry Potter films), romantics (Rosalind in ‘As You Like It’) and goons (Cherie Blair in ‘The Queen’). Now she stars as the ultimate anti-heroine, Euripides’s Medea, in a new NT production. She explains why it is the role for women.

Is Medea a bit like a female Hamlet?
‘It is, it’s one of the greatest parts you’ll ever play as an actress. Except 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 fucking stage and walks off. 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.’

Medea does some pretty nasty stuff:  filicide, regicide. Is she a villain?
‘Ben Power’s adaptation focuses on disenfranchisement, on what happens when this highly educated, powerful, manipulative, eloquent woman, is not allowed to be part of society. But it also looks at acts of extreme violence, which often come from long-term brutalisation – which is Medea. She’s a product of a warring society, which is very relevant to today.’

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Categories Damian Lewis Interviews Personal and Family Life Print Media

Helen McCrory: Women who obsess about their looks have too much time on their hands

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“Women who obsess about their age and weight have too much time on their hands”

By Hannah Furness |
Actress Helen McCrory
Actress Helen McCrory CREDIT: Photo: Clara Molden

Women who obsess over their age and appearance have too much time on their hands, the actress Helen McCrory has said.

McCrory, the wife of Homeland star Damian Lewis, said so many women are now preoccupied with their weight and changing looks.

Saying her own upbringing had taught her “thing like that just don’t f—– matter”, she insisted her own self-worth would never be determined by her looks.

McCrory, who has appeared in The Queen, Skyfall and the Harry Potter franchise, has now paid tribute to her parents for instilling in her a refreshing approach to ageing.

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