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Helen McCrory: A shining star at her peak

On February 6, 2022February 6, 2022 By helenistic No Comments

She stole the show and our hearts

By Cole Moreton | February 6, 2022 | YOU Magazine

Aunt Polly dresses to kill. Literally. In series two of Peaky Blinders, she gets all glammed up in a hat, gloves and lace choker plus hidden revolver. It’s a scene that reveals her ruthlessness as she seeks outa police chief who has raped her. Polly gets close enough to kiss him, then shoots the devil through the heart. And as he dies, Polly spits out a line that has come to define the show: ‘Don’t f*** with the Peaky Blinders.’ As the camera lingers on her wild eyes and drying tears, we see again why Helen McCrory was hailed as one of the best actors of her generation, even before she agreed to play a leading role in this brutal family drama set in the slums of Birmingham just after the First World War.

Helen turned it down at first, for fear of being asked to play a cliché. ‘My own grandparents grew up in the slums of Glasgow and were miners’ kids in Cardiff and I thought I was going to be there with a mangle saying things like: “Gotta get up early to get a wash on in the back yard.”’

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Peaky Blinders Print Media Tributes

Peaky Power

On February 6, 2022February 6, 2022 By helenistic No Comments

The Formidable Shelby Women Remember Helen McCrory

by Cole Moreton | February 6, 2022 | YOU Magazine

The women of Peaky Blinders have assembled for our exclusive YOU cover story but, tragically, there is somebody missing. ‘I consider Helen to have been the heart of this show,’ says Sophie Rundle. In the hugely popular period drama, Sophie plays Ada, who, along with her four brothers, takes on the police, the IRA, the Mafia and the world.

peaky blinders women

She’s talking, of course, about actress Helen McCrory, who starred as the family’s matriarch Aunt Polly and who should be with us as the female cast members gather to mark the beginning of the sixth and final series, but who sadly died of cancer last April, aged just 52. ‘She died as she lived. Fearlessly,’ wrote her husband Damian Lewis, fellow actor and father to their two teenage children.

According to the Peaky Blinders story, the Irish-Romany Shelby children were abandoned by their father and brought up by their hard-talking, cheroot-smoking, gun-toting aunt, played with intensity and brilliance over five seasons by Helen.

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Peaky Blinders Print Media Tributes

Editor’s Letter: My heartfelt note from a true star

On February 6, 2022February 6, 2022 By helenistic No Comments

YOU Magazine editor Jo Elvin remembers Helen

By Jo Elvin | February 6, 2022 | You Magazine

–

A few years ago in a former magazine job, my biggest task every year was organising a huge, annual celebrity awards show. I’d probably look 20 years younger right now if I’d never experienced the stress of that, but I must admit, it has also gifted me with some of my funniest and most precious career-related memories.

One standout moment involves the late actress Helen McCrory. She happened to be very close friends with some pals of mine, so it wasn’t unusual for me to see her at Sunday lunch gatherings, or one particularly raucous New Year’s Eve in a pub where our dogs outnumbered the humans and enjoyable chaos ensued. But beyond a bit of small chitchat every so often, I can’t say I knew her. I didn’t even really get to talk to her the night we honoured her with a ‘film actress of the year’ award at my fancy do. (I was always too busy firefighting and keeping the whole thing organised to ever relax and enjoy the evening.)

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Peaky Blinders Print Media Tributes

Cillian Murphy Reflects on the Tragic Loss of his co-star Helen McCrory

On February 2, 2022 By helenistic No Comments

The ‘Magnificent’ Helen

LONDON, ENGLAND – MAY 03: Paul Anderson, Helen McCrory and Cillian Murphy attend the Premiere of BBC Two’s drama “Peaky Blinders” episode one, series three at BFI Southbank on May 3, 2016 in London, England. (Photo by Anthony Harvey/Getty Images)

by Miranda Collinge | Esquire UK | February 1, 2022

Helenistic’s note: The following is a part of a longer interview Cillian Murphy gave to Esquire UK.

In March 2020, Murphy was preparing to fly to Manchester to shoot the final season of Peaky Blinders. Pre-production was complete; the sets were built. Yet the first cases of Covid-19 in both England and Ireland had already been identified. There were rumours of lockdowns. Murphy and his co-star, Helen McCrory, who had also been in the series since the show began in 2013, playing Tommy’s spunky Aunt Polly, were concerned.

“I do remember both myself and Helen calling the producers and saying, ‘Guys, surely we can’t do this?’” Murphy recalls. “They were saying, ‘Well, we’re still waiting to see.’ And then, eventually, they called it.”

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Damian Lewis Events Poetry Print Media Tributes

A Joyful Tribute to Helen McCrory by Damian Lewis

On January 31, 2022 By helenistic No Comments

A Poet for Every Day of the Year at the National Theatre

Quentin Letts | The Sunday Times | January 30, 2022

Helen McCrory and Damian Lewis in 2015 MIKE MARSLAND/WIREIMAGE/GETTY IMAGES

A Poet for Every Day of the Year
Lyttelton, National Theatre, London SE1
★★★★☆

Helen McCrory’s voice had not crackled across the Lyttelton stage since her 2016 performance in The Deep Blue Sea, but it was heard again on Tuesday when a poetry reading in her memory closed with grainy footage of her at a similar event some years back. That McCrory voice, rich as brandied cake, delivered Mary Oliver’s Wild Geese. Amid despair “the world goes on” and clear pebbles of rain continue to drift across prairies while wild geese, high above, “are heading home again”.

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