Categories Audio Interviews Rosmersholm

BBC 4 Radio Woman’s Hour: Helen McCrory Talks About Rosmersholm

As Rebecca West in Ibsen’s Rosmersholm

BBC 4 Radio Woman’s Hour | May 30, 2008

The actress Helen McCrory has been acclaimed for her talent and her range: as one journalist put it, “not many actresses can say that they have played Cherie Blair, Lady Macbeth and Anna Karenina”. She is now in the Ibsen play “Rosmersholm” at the Almeida Theatre in London. The play is not the best known of Ibsen’s work and is the story of Rosmer, a former pastor and pillar of society, whose wife has committed suicide. Her companion, Rebecca West, has stayed at Rosmersholm and she and Rosmer become inspired by radical idealism. Helen McCrory joins Sheila to talk about the role and her life.

Listen here.

Rosmersholm is at the Almeida Theatre in London until 5th July

Categories Damian Lewis Flashbacks of a Fool Interviews Personal and Family Life Print Media Rosmersholm

Helen McCrory: The Importance of Being Sex

Helen McCrory likes to speak her mind. A lot.

by Maureen Patton | April 12, 2008 | Daily Mail

Helen McCrory

Hold on to your hats as the natural heir to Judi Dench and Maggie Smith spells out exactly why she won’t do stage and screen nudity.

“I don’t want to sign for a job that I have to have a bikini wax for,” says Helen, who persuaded the director of BBC’s 2003 drama series Charles II to ditch the full-frontals before she would agree to play the sexually voracious Countess of Castlemaine.

For as she puts it, “sex is all in the brain”.

Life’s not all froth for award-winning actress Helen McCrory. Married to handsome actor Damian Lewis, she appears to have it all…

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Categories Flashbacks of a Fool Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Interviews

Helen McCrory: The Dame Game

She’s a West End star who’s about to join her husband in Hollywood. No wonder critics call Helen McCrory the next Judi Dench, says Hannah Duguid

Despite being one of Britain’s foremost actresses, Helen McCrory is rarely recognised in public. Recently, a taxi driver refused to believe who she was. “You’re not Helen McCrory,” he said. She was unable to convince him of the truth. I can see how he made the mistake. In the flesh, despite having given birth only a few weeks before, she is slight, pretty and, although a formidable presence, does not remotely resemble Cherie Blair, whom she portrayed so convincingly in Stephen Frears’s film The Queen. “I’ve often sat down with people talking about a film I’ve been in and they haven’t realised I was in it. I think they’re just being weird by not saying anything until I realise what has happened,” she says. Not that she is phased by any of this: “What really matters to me is what my peers think.”

Her marriage to the actor Damian Lewis the couple have two children has occasionally propelled her on to the pages of magazines. But McCrory and Lewis seem as well grounded as it is possible to be when you’re one half of a famous couple who divide their time between north London and Los Angeles. There are flourishes of luvviness “darlings” and enthusiastic swearing with a cut-glass accent yet they are clearly devoted to each other. He accompanies her to our meeting at a Soho restaurant and settles her and their tiny baby son into a corner table before politely disappearing.

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Categories Frankenstein Interviews Print Media

Mothering a Mutant

Helen McCrory as Dr Frankenstein

As ITV1’s Frankenstein breathes new life into a classic story, writer Jed Mercurio and star Helen McCrory tell Serena Davies why it’s a tale for our times

Now that stem cell research is sufficiently advanced that scientists can fabricate heart muscle tissue, the creation of an entire heart, and even an entire creature, no longer sounds like science fiction. Which makes this the perfect time to update the story of Frankenstein: the tale, written in 1818 by a 19-year-old woman novelist, in which a scientist does just that.

Enter Frankenstein, a new feature-length drama written and directed by Jed Mercurio, the former doctor who made his name with the gritty hospital dramas Bodies and Cardiac Arrest.

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Categories Damian Lewis Interviews Personal and Family Life Print Media The Queen

Great Expectations: An Interview with Helen McCrory – August 25, 2006

Drama Queen

by Lydia Slater | Evening Standard Magazine | August 25, 2006

Perched on a velvet sofa in the elegant sitting room of the Cheyne Walk Brasserie, Helen McCrory strokes her Stella McCartney-clad stomach and smiles under heavy eyelids, rather like the cat who’s got the cream. As well she might. Life has never seemed to be particularly tough for McCrory, 37, who has been winning plaudits for her acting ever since she took her first role in the National Theatre’s production of Trelawney of the Wells, and who is constantly tipped as the next Judi Dench.

But even by her own high standards, the future is looking pretty rosy. She is eight months pregnant with her first child, and has an unnervingly perfect celebrity bump – no fat ankles or swollen face, just a watermelon at the waistline and a correspondingly magnificent bronzed cleavage. “I’ve never worn so many low-cut dresses in my life. If I could just wear spangles, I would. I feel so amazingly attractive,” she gurgles throatily, with total justice if our young waiter’s saucer eyes are anything to go by.

McCrory doesn’t appear to notice him but then if you’re engaged to Damian Lewis, star of The Forsyte Saga and Band of Brothers (and arguably the sexiest redhead on the planet), waiters probably come rather low in the pecking order. “I’ve never been broody before, but when I met Damian I became very different about relationships,” she says.

Continue reading Great Expectations: An Interview with Helen McCrory – August 25, 2006