Tag: Five Gold Rings

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Helen McCrory on Desert Island Discs Podcast

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Helen Dishes About Her Better Half

by Gingersnap | damian-lewis.com | June 28, 2020

Helen McCrory OBE is one of the most versatile and critically acclaimed actresses working today. On screen she has played Anna Karenina, Cherie Blair (twice), Harry Potter‘s Narcissa Malfoy and the Peaky Blinders matriarch Aunt Polly. Her theatre roles range from Yelena in Uncle Vanya to Euripides‘ Medea.

A diplomat’s daughter, she spent her early childhood in Africa before continuing her education in the UK. After a bruising and unsuccessful audition at the Drama Centre in London – she was instructed to find out more about life before learning to act – she travelled to Italy where she discovered art and love and came back to try again. This time she passed the audition.

In 1993 she made her mark in Richard Eyre’s production of Trelawny of the Wells at the National Theatre and went on to perform leading roles on some of London’s most prestigious stages, winning two Olivier Award nominations. She was awarded an OBE for services to drama in 2017.

She met her husband, fellow actor Damian Lewis, when they both starred in a play called Five Gold Rings. In response to the Covid-19 pandemic Helen and Damian, together with the comedian Matt Lucas, co-founded the Feed NHS campaign which raises money to provide hot meals to frontline NHS workers.

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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).

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