Tag: Emma Banville

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Helen McCrory on Fearless, Peaky Blinders and juggling family life with husband Damian Lewis

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The actress tells James Rampton why she refuses to accept that society is inherently selfish

by James Rampton | June 8, 2017 | The Independent

McCrory stars as a human rights lawyer in the legal thriller
McCrory stars as a human rights lawyer in the legal thriller
 (ITV)

When he was interviewing politicians on BBC2’s Newsnight, it was often said that the presenter Jeremy Paxman lived by the old journalistic motto: “Why is this lying bastard lying to me?”

That is also the credo adopted by Emma Banville, the central character in Fearless, ITV’s absorbing new six-part legal thriller. Played with characteristic panache and passion by the actress Helen McCrory, Emma is a human rights lawyer whose speciality is defending lost causes. Her whole career has been based on questioning the powers that be and refusing to accept the official line.

According to Patrick Harbinson, the creator of the series, (who also worked with McCrory’s husband Damian Lewis on Homeland), the character is inspired by the work of lawyers like Gareth Peirce and Helena Kennedy.

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Helen McCrory: Call me an actress not an actor – in my job gender matters

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A Person’s Sex “Really Matters” When Taking On A Role

by Emma Powell | The Evening Standard | June 6, 2017

McCrory said gender is important as men and women have very different experiences of the world

Helen McCrory has criticised calls for gender neutrality in acting, saying a person’s sex “really matters” when taking on a role.

The Peaky Blinders star said she found it “odd” when people called her an actor as opposed to an actress, because men and women have very different experiences of the world.

She told the Standard: “I’m not an actor – I’m an actress. I find it odd when people introduce me as an actor. There are many, many jobs that it doesn’t matter what sex you are — it doesn’t matter what sex your doctor is, or your lawyer – but as an actress your sex really matters because part of your experience of the world is as a woman.”

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Categories Fearless Interviews Print Media

Star of Fearless Helen McCrory: ‘Of course you can’t have everything’

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The actress on marriage to Damian Lewis and her fierce new TV role

by Andrew Billen | May 26, 2017 |  The Times
Helen McCrory: “I have never had a problem with sexuality on stage”
NICKY JOHNSTON/CAMERA PRESS

ITV really, really wanted Helen McCrory to star in its big conspiracy thriller, Fearless. When, in February last year, she explained she was otherwise committed, playing the troubled heroine of Terence Rattigan’s The Deep Blue Sea at the National Theatre in London, the programme-makers said, fine, they would wait until she was done in the autumn and film then. Shortly before the play opened in June, Fearless’s writer, Patrick Harbinson — who, coincidentally, had worked with her husband, Damian Lewis, on Homeland — came to the theatre during rehearsals and bought her coffee.

“He came to convince me he’d written it for me,” she says. “Just like the actress before.”

Yet even this cynicism (which is meant as modesty) demonstrates why Helen McCrory is, indeed, perfect for the part of Emma Banville, a fearless, streetwise, no-bull lawyer investigating a wrongful conviction and an international government plot. The six-parter is due to be broadcast next month. If you want fierce in your female lead, you want McCrory, the murderous Aunt Polly in Peaky Blinders, the child-killing princess of Euripides’s Medea, the Vampire of Venice in Doctor Who, the evil Madame Kali in Penny Dreadful and, perhaps, most chillingly of all, Cherie Blair in Peter Morgan’s The Queen.

Continue reading Star of Fearless Helen McCrory: ‘Of course you can’t have everything’

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Helen McCrory on her marriage to Damian Lewis: “He’s never given me reason to be jealous”

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A Thoroughly Modern Marriage

by Elizabeth Day | Stella Magazine | April 1, 2017

Helen McCrory arrives hungry. We’re meeting  on a spring afternoon in  a pub around the corner from her north London home, and Helen hasn’t yet eaten. She’s got a couple of hours before  she has to pick up her children – Manon, 10, and Gulliver, nine – from school, and she fully intends to make the most of them.

‘Are you sure this is all right?’ she asks  as she orders the soup of the day. ‘I mean, really? OK, well, I think I’ll have the lamb as a main… I’ll come back for pudding.’

We sit outside. Helen is tiny: slender and upright with the poise of a ballerina. She is also wildly entertaining. At 48, she is one of those women whose face is accentuated by faint wrinkles rather than oppressed by them – and she couldn’t care less anyway, given that she is constantly in work. Actresses over 35 are routinely asked if they’re concerned about the lack of roles for ‘older women’. When I raise this, Helen deadpans, ‘Well, I hope they find work.’

For her, it’s never been a problem. She finds vanity and self-regard boring. Recently, she took on the part of Elizabeth I for the children’s TV series Horrible Histories,  and ‘I begged the director to let me have  a bald cap, a pockmarked face and blackened teeth. And he was like, “But we could make her look so beautiful.” I said, “Yeah, but where’s the fun in that?”

‘Ageing hasn’t changed that much for me because it’s never been, “Elle Macpherson’s not available, let’s get McCrory!”’

Helen is more interested in characters ‘if they’re different from me. That’s what I enjoy most about the job.’ Her career has been both impressive and varied – from big-budget box-office catnip (Narcissa Malfoy  in the Harry Potter films) to small-screen critical acclaim (Aunt Polly in Peaky Blinders) to dazzling stage performances (her electrifying 2014 turn as Medea won her a Critics’ Circle Theatre Award for Best Actress).

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