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.
