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Helen McCrory: ‘ I don’t think I’m deep enough to have mental-health issues’

On Badass Women and Being Married to Her ‘Best Friend’

by Gavanndra Hodge | The Telegraph | August 9, 2019

She’s straight-talking, hates housework, dresses to kill, and lives life her way – convention be damned. Turns out Helen McCrory has plenty in common with her badass Peaky Blinders character Polly.

Helen McCrory, the multiple-award winning actor, is holding what looks like a moist slice of turkey. ‘What is that?’ I ask. ‘It’s a face mask, darling. £1.99 from Superdrug,’ she says, rubbing it against her neck. ‘It’s going to make me look like a teenager.’

We are standing outside a café on the Regent’s Canal, cyclists and prams whizzing by. McCrory is wearing a floral tea dress, silver Zadig & Voltaire boots, sunglasses and a VIP wristband from a Bob Dylan concert she went to, five days ago. ‘I am never taking it off,’ she says.

There is a sort of rock-star swagger to Helen McCrory, 50, a charismatic, don’t-give-a-damn cool with her chipped red nails and posh-voiced sweariness. She likes to party, to wear top hats and vintage frocks, and there is the inevitable doubling of glamour that comes from her marriage to the actor Damian Lewis (Brody from Homeland, more recently Bobby Axelrod in Billions), with whom she lives in a tall, narrow house in Tufnell Park with their children Manon, 12, and Gulliver, 11.

Continue reading Helen McCrory: ‘ I don’t think I’m deep enough to have mental-health issues’

Categories Interviews Peaky Blinders Print Media

Helen McCrory on why she loves playing Peaky Blinders’ Polly Gray

Plus, why Aunt Polly is Misunderstood

by Megan Sutton | August 8, 2019 | Good Housekeeping

Although in real life most of us strive to be good citizens, for actors there’s lots of fun to be had in pretending to be someone with a darker side. That’s certainly true for Peaky Blinders star Helen McCrory, who much prefers playing a baddie.

“It’s much more fun, it’s loads of fun playing the baddie,” she told press including Goodhousekeeping.com/uk at a preview ahead of Peaky Blinders season five.

Categories Announcements His Dark Materials News Print Media Voicework

Helen McCrory joins cast of His Dark Material

The Peaky Blinders and Harry Potter star will play Lord Asriel’s daemon Stelmaria

by Huw Fullerton | July 19, 2019 | Radio Times

Helen McCrory and a fictional snow leopard
Philip Pullman adaptation His Dark Materials already had a pretty starry cast including Lin-Manuel Miranda and James McAvoy, and now another familiar face has been added to the line-up – veteran character actor Helen McCrory, whose casting was announced in the wake of the new trailer launch at San Diego Comic-Con.McCrory (best known for playing Aunt Polly in the BBC’s Peaky Blinders and Narcissa Malfoy in the last three Harry Potter films) will voice Stelmaria, the snow leopard dæmon of James McAvoy’s Lord Asriel, and is the first big voice role revealed in a series full of non-human characters.Other notable characters in this vein include armoured bear/ panserbjørn Iorek Byrnison and other Dæmons (external human souls in animal form) including the unnamed golden monkey of Mrs Coulter, Lee Scoresby’s (Lin-Manuel Miranda) Arctic Hare dæmon Hester and many others.

Hopefully, we’ll have announcements soon concerning these other voice-only roles – but for now, it’s good to see a stellar cast get even more Stelmariar.

His Dark Materials comes to BBC1 in winter 2019

Categories Appearances Charity Events Personal and Family Life Print Media Sir Hubert Von Herkomer Arts Foundation

Helen McCrory is star guest at spellbinding concert

VIP Guest for Mental Health Awareness

NHS Foundation Trust Camden and Islington | May 16, 2019

Actor Helen McCrory OBEActor Helen McCrory, OBE, was the VIP speaker at a concert of NHS choirs from across London who came together for the very first time to mark Mental Health Awareness Week.

Camden and Islington NHS Trust’s own choir, which was set up three years ago and includes staff and service users, was the star turn at the event at UNISON’s HQ in Euston on Thursday 16 May.

The other choirs included youngsters from Camden Youth Choirs, The Whittington’s Sing for Your Lungs Choir, and the chart-topping Lewisham and Greenwich NHS singers.

Helen, whose many film, theatre and television roles include Narcissa Malfoy in the final two Harry Potter Films and Aunt Polly in Peaky Blinders was recently awarded an OBE for her services to drama.  She is Patron of the Sir Hubert Von Herkomer Arts Foundation which is dedicated to helping give children a gateway to the arts, providing them with the inspiration and the tools to develop lifelong artistic passions.

Continue reading Helen McCrory is star guest at spellbinding concert

Categories Charles II aka The Last King: The Power and Passion of Charles II Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Peaky Blinders Print Media

Helen McCrory’s journey from playing a protective mother in ‘Harry Potter’ to gang matriarch in ‘Peaky Blinders’ has been phenomenal

The British actress has played a number of unconventional roles — each getting more ambitious than the previous one.

 Helen McCrory's journey from playing a protective mother in 'Harry Potter' to gang matriarch in 'Peaky Blinders' has been phenomenal

There are only a few actresses who have been able to portray a mother who commits heinous crimes while maintaining her image as the savior matriarch. Going by this record then, British actress Helen McCrory has time and again excelled in roles that proved a mother is not only committed towards the well-being of her children but can be selfish enough to disregard the affairs of the world solely for the benefit of motherhood. Her characters might not be diverse but the confined roles that she plays have been executed until the last morsel has been squeezed out of those characters.

At the moment, McCrory is best known for her role as the Shelby matriarch, Polly Grey, a gypsy woman who is able to talk to spirits but at the same time commits a murder in the cleanest possible way. Polly Grey is one of the leading women on BBC One’s ‘Peaky Blinders’ but unlike her fellow characters, Polly holds the upper hand when it comes to the Shelby family business. As the company’s treasurer, Polly decides where the money goes and what happens with it, and let’s keep in mind this is a woman who lives in the early 1910s, a time when due to World War I men were out in the battlefield and women for the first time were taking control over business.

Continue reading Helen McCrory’s journey from playing a protective mother in ‘Harry Potter’ to gang matriarch in ‘Peaky Blinders’ has been phenomenal