Medea
by Gingersnap4Helen | helen-mccrory.com | August 27, 2014
Helen McCrory talks to Genista McInosh about her preparation to play Medea and reflects on her acting career.
Categories Interviews Medea Video
VIDEO: Medea Official Trailer
Medea with Helen McCrory
by National Theatre | YouTube | July 22, 2014
Categories A Little Chaos Bill Interviews Penny Dreadful Personal and Family Life Print Media The Woman in Black, Angel of Death
Helen McCrory Interview: Woman & Home
The Real Me
by Victoria Young | Woman & Home | Autumn, 2014
Helen McCrory talks to Victoria Young about feminism, marriage to a sex symbol – and being a gypsy at heart.
Actress Helen McCrory, 46, has played everyone from Medea to Cherie Blair as well as Polly Gray in Peaky Blinders. She’s married to actor Damian Lewis. They live in London and have two children, Manon, eight, and Gulliver, seven.
I grew up in Africa because my father was a diplomat. So I was lucky enough to grow up in a world without advertising. As a result, I’ve never judged myself on what I was supposed to look like. It’s good and bad. When it came to filming the second series of Peaky Blinders, I decided “I want Polly to look rougher, she should look haggard, life beaten, absolutely exhausted.” I then saw the first episode and remembered the adage, “Be careful what you wish for.”
Categories Interviews Medea Print Media
Helen McCrory: A Drama Queen Slays Them with Her Greek Turn
As a child she sliced a beehive in half with a machete; now the feisty actress is wowing theatre-goers with her gory portrayal of the murderous matriarch Medea
04 April 2011 – Helen McCrory attends the grand opening of Harry Potter: The Exhibition on April 4, 2011, at the Discovery Times Square Exposition Center, in New York, NY.
Tickets for Benedict Cumberbatch’s Hamlet may have sold out in record time last week, but Helen McCrory’s Medea is the theatrical event of the moment. Avid theatre-goers who take in both may find the Shakespeare a little pale after McCrory’s “stunning” performance in Euripides’s blood-soaked tale of a woman who wreaks revenge on her faithless husband by killing their children. “It’s the reverse of Hamlet because he spends three hours worrying and does nothing, whereas Medea takes an hour and 15, massacres the whole f****** stage and walks off,” McCrory said before the production opened. “But it’s great because she uses every shred of femininity that she has to do it and she also has the complexity of guilt.”
McCrory added that Medea was “one of the greatest parts you’ll ever play” and the critics seem united in lauding this as her own best performance. Maxie Szalwinska, theatre reviewer for The Sunday Times, said McCrory “ascends to greatness” in the classical role. “She’s one of those actors you can sense has a great performance in them if a director can unlock it. This is McCrory’s,” Szalwinska said.
Continue reading Helen McCrory: A Drama Queen Slays Them with Her Greek Turn
Categories Personal and Family Life Print Media
What I see in the Mirror: Helen McCrory
My eyes are large, with dark circles – as the Spanish say, “God put her eyes in with a sooty thumb”‘
Rosanna Greenstreet | August 2, 2014 | The Guardian
My hair is wild, Janis Joplin crossed with Jimi Hendrix. There’s a nice man – Matthew – in Percy Street who tames it for me. But if there’s no time, I’ll happily pop on a wig or hat or, if it’s not too hot, both.
My eyes are large, with dark circles – as the Spanish say, “God put her eyes in with a sooty thumb.” Teeth, nondescript. Lips, full – less so now, which allows me to wear red lipstick without looking like a sex worker.
I’m small, but have always thought of myself as tall. I stand straight, with one of my two children welded to each hip. I am strong – years of ballet as a child have assured that my legs would not look out of place in a football squad lineup.
I’m a mixture of my father and my mother inside and out – Welsh and Scottish with a dash of English.
My best feature is my smile, and I suppose it will remain my best feature for ever. After all, a happy, toothless, withered old crone smiling at you is better than a grumpy, toothless, withered old crone snarling at you.