Categories Damian Lewis Interviews Personal and Family Life Print Media

Celebrity Foodies Take Lucy Hunter Johnston Out to Lunch

by Lucy Hunter Johnston | The Evening Standard | June 10, 2011

 

Damian Lewis
I met Harold Pinter for the first time at J Sheekey. He was charming, undeniably rather gruff and imposing, but he adored Helen, so I was happy to let him flirt with her all night while I talked to his wife Antonia. It was in the very early days of our relationship, but I wasn’t jealous; I was proud.

I love being part of the legacy of Sheekey’s. It’s taken a while, though. I didn’t start coming properly until I was in my thirties. Trying to book a table when I was 25 would have felt pretentious; you need to earn your stripes. The Parisian/New York brasserie feel of the place is completely to my taste. They are so warm and welcoming here that they just gather up regulars, and always look after you and find you a last-minute table.

Helen and I partied very, very hard before we met and then we collided at the Almeida in 2004 [in Five Gold Rings] and together we partied even harder. We used to lose entire evenings listening to jazz at Ronnie Scott’s. We love to dance, and when we weren’t out we’d put on music really loudly and dance around the house, just the two of us.

I proposed to Helen in Paris. I tried to do it on the Pont Neuf – I was sweating bullets and wrestling in my overcoat pocket for the ring, which had got stuck in a little Cellophane bag, but when I finally got it out, a gaggle of Japanese tourists surrounded us like a flock of seagulls, taking pictures, and the moment was totally destroyed. I now take Helen back to Paris for three days without our two kids [Manon, four, and Gulliver, three] every February for our anniversary. We walk about the city, and sit in bars drinking rosé.

I only really started cooking when I became a dad. Helen was flat out breastfeeding and sleeping, exhausted all the time. I realised that if I didn’t cook, we wouldn’t eat. Now I love to cook Gary Rhodes’ fishcakes with a lemon butter sauce and green beans. I’m no food connoisseur, though; foodies have palates that can speak hundreds of different languages – mine can only manage about one.

Helen McCrory

The first time I came to Sheekey’s was when I was working at the Donmar in 2002 [in Uncle Vanya and Twelfth Night] with Sam Mendes and Kate Winslet and I fell in love with the fish pie. It’s since become one of those places that I have visited so many times that it feels like my local pub. I have so many memories of evenings spent here. I look in one corner and think of the first time Brian Selznick came over: we all had dinner here with Scorsese. We’re here all the time; last week we saw Sienna [Miller] in Flare Path and all had dinner here afterwards; the week before we were here with Benedict [Cumberbatch] after seeing him in Frankenstein. The other day I bumped into Dom West in the street and we sat at the bar and had Welsh rarebit and a Guinness. When Sienna and I were in As You Like It we used to come every lunchtime and every evening. I would order razor clams with broad beans and chorizo, then fish pie with mushy peas, and finish with Scandinavian iced berries.

When I’m working on stage I rush around a lot, so I can eat more, but when we’re filming it’s completely different. Basically everyone arrives on the first day at their normal weight and leaves double the size, spines crushed a foot shorter with fat. That’s the problem with eating on the Harry Potter set [she plays Narcissa Malfoy]. It’s even worse when you’re doing a US production – they may have sushi and salad bars in addition to the burgers, but I have seen living proof that you can get fat on salad. That said, Damian and I love eating out twice a week, we always have. Even when the children were really little we’d take them in cots. We were big party animals, but now instead of keeping going until the early hours, we’ll be done by midnight and think, ‘Wow, what a fantastic evening.’ It’s an age thing; quite frankly, we don’t have the staying power we used to.

Read the rest of the article here.

Categories Damian Lewis Personal and Family Life

Sicily for Bambini: A Family Holiday with Helen McCrory and Damian Lewis

Playtime, Pampering, and Pasta

by Helen McCrory | British Airways Highlife | August 1, 2010

Damian and children practice sword fighting in the castle ruins, Caltabellotta (Courtesy of Helen McCrory)

Actors Helen McCrory and husband Damian Lewis plus their two children head to Sicily for playtime, pampering and pasta.

‘Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen, that’s a wrap!’ It’s 1am and I’m standing in a disused industrial park in London in the rain. We’ve been filming the same ten lines for hours now and even the writer has fallen out of love with the scene. But who cares. In 12 hours, I shall be sitting by the pool in Rocco Forte’s Sicilian Verdura Golf & Spa Resort for a week of pampering, peace, pasta and a bit of good old-fashioned shuteye.

My husband Damian and I both know Italy well, but I have never visited Sicily. Damian went there some years ago with a mate on an Edwardian-style grand tour, when he’d quickly learnt the all-important phrase ‘Posso avere una camera con due letti, per favore’ — which translates as ‘a single room with two separate beds, please’ — after they had been presented with a luxurious double bed on their first night. But they stayed in the northern part of the island and Verdura is on the southwest coast between Sciacca, a fishing port, and Agrigento, home to some of the best-preserved Greek temples in the world. The resort also has a children’s crèche, and we have a three-year-old, Manon, and a two-year-old, Gulliver, with energy levels that would put even the Sicilians’ famous love of children to the test. It sounds perfect.

Continue reading Sicily for Bambini: A Family Holiday with Helen McCrory and Damian Lewis

Categories Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Interviews Personal and Family Life Print Media The Special Relationship

Scotsman Interview: Helen McCrory

Whether it’s the former PM’s wife or an enchantress in Harry Potter, Helen McCrory approaches her roles with a light touch. And that attitude extends to family life

When I see Helen McCrory’s name attached to a project, a flash of happy anticipation illuminates my pleasure centre: I’m confident that whatever else, her performance will be worth the price of admission.

Phenomenal acting aside, she’s also a member of that special sisterhood whose magnetism crosses the gender divide, with a beauty all the more stirring for being tough to quantify. If pressed, I’d trace her charisma to the twinkle in her eyes and the wry smile tugging at her lips, hinting at secret knowledge – probably of the saucy variety.  

Off screen she does not disappoint. While there’s none of that faux best friend nonsense you get with some interviewees, she’s companionable and relaxed, tucking into a second cup of coffee with gusto – she’s only recently back on caffeine after weaning her youngest – and quick to laugh and tease.

This month we’ll see her in a far more high-strung persona, playing Draco’s mum, Narcissa Malfoy, in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. She approached the assignment with relish, keen to work with director David Yates. “Did you ever see (his] Sex Traffic? It was an absolutely fantastic film about two Polish girls forced into the sex industry in Britain.” Pregnancy prohibited her tackling the role of Bellatrix LeStrange, as was originally mooted some years ago and it went to Helena Bonham Carter, instead. Now, however, McCrory is able to play her sister.

Continue reading Scotsman Interview: Helen McCrory

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 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