Tag: Damian Lewis

Categories Damian Lewis Interviews Penny Dreadful Print Media

Helen McCrory: ‘I’ve successfully repressed everything I don’t want people to know about me’

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Inside the Head of… Helen McCrory

by Emma Cox | April 25, 2015 | Event Magazine

She grew up a ‘feral, compulsive liar’… perfect training for an actress. She’s at her most relaxed either asleep backstage during the interval or talking to strangers – which is why husband Damian Lewis has to remind her: ‘You’re not the Queen!’

'With a husband (Damian Lewis), two children and a job, I don¿t sleep and dream,' said Helen

What is your earliest memory?

Walking along a path near our home in Cameroon with my mum and my brother and my labrador Jasper. I am looking down at my knees, which were very dark at the time because they were covered in dust. I lived in Africa until I was six or seven, in Cameroon and Tanzania. It was absolutely beautiful, a great place to grow up.

What sort of child were you?

A feral, compulsive liar. Every country we went to, I would make up these fantastical stories about who I was and what my parents did, and just pray to God that my father’s posting would come around quickly before I was rumbled in the playground. I would say things like, ‘My father works for the Queen,’ which was based in truth as he worked for the Foreign Office, but I was just such a liar. I suppose in the end it was good practice for being an actress.

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Categories A Little Chaos Damian Lewis Interviews Print Media

Helen McCrory interview: on motherhood, Damian Lewis and what makes her mad

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Helen McCrory talks about Celtic grit, her strict approach to parenting, and her equally sought-after husband

By Chloe Fox |
“There’s a whole generation of children growing up who don’t seem able to express themselves.” CREDIT: Photo: Kate Davis MacLeod

“As far as I can remember, I have never slept with Alan Rickman…” Helen McCrory is so deft a master at the art of the deadpan that it can be quite unsettling. We are having a late breakfast, and discussing how she came to accept the role of the evil Madame Le Nôtre in A Little Chaos, a romantic drama centred on the court of Louis XIV, which Rickman both directs and stars in. Unflinchingly serious, with one pencil-thin dark eyebrow raised, McCrory takes a slow sip of her coffee before allowing a glimmer of a smirk to give the game away.

While they have never been involved romantically on screen or otherwise, she and Rickman – both giants of the British theatre scene – have had a long-running friendship, cemented by the Harry Potter franchise (she played Narcissa Malfoy in three of the eight films in which he starred as Severus Snape). “I was absolutely thrilled when he sent me the script and asked me to come and play,” she says of A Little Chaos.

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Categories Damian Lewis Fashion and Style Interviews Personal and Family Life Print Media

Vogue Interview with Helen McCrory and Damian Lewis

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No Place Like Homeland

by Staff | Vogue | January 20, 2015

“Do you know, I think you might wear a suit better than any man I’ve ever met.” In the intimate and strangely forbidden confines of a lift at the National Theatre, Helen McCrory’s heavily made-up hazel eyes are drinking in her husband’s tall, tailored frame.

“Thank you,” he replies, faintly awkwardly, looking down at the same Tom Ford tuxedo he wore to accept the best actor Emmy award only last month. “Does this mean you want me to do all the washing-up for a week?”

A gypsy laugh bubbles up from deep inside McCrory’s tiny dancer’s body.

“No, my darling, of course not! Just the bedtime stories…”

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Categories Damian Lewis Interviews Personal and Family Life Print Media

Helen McCrory’s Travelling Life

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Helen McCrory: “What I love about travel is the freedom. Anything that gets in the way of that is missing the point”

How often do you travel?

As an actress, it is feast or famine when it comes to holidays. I have two children and try to get three holidays a year with them. Last year, we did a weekend in Rome, where it snowed for the first time in 30 years. Then my husband, Damian [Lewis, the actor], worked in Mantua for a week, so we went to Venice for the weekend and visited the Italian countryside for a week. It was bliss.

We also visited Mauritius during the hurricane season, which was actually OK. When it rained, we’d stay inside and watch the geckoes and then walk out afterwards to see bright flowers and rainbows. I was brought up in very exotic places, as my father was a diplomat. By the time I was nine I had lived all over the world, from Oslo to Nigeria and Zanzibar. As a child, I used to think the most exotic place was Cardiff, where my grandparents lived, and where I first saw snow.

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