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Damian Lewis On His Wife Helen McCrory

On April 18, 2021October 23, 2021 By helenistic 8 Comments

“I’ve never known anyone able to enjoy life as much”

by Damian Lewis | The Sunday Times | April 18, 2021

Photo by Dave M. Benett/Getty Images

The star, who has died of cancer at 52, was a brilliant actress and an even better person, writes her husband.

As I sit down to write this, I can hear Helen shouting from the bed, “Keep it short, Damian, it’s not about you.”

I’ll try, but on a weekend when the papers, rightly, will be paying their respects to the Duke of Edinburgh, thousands of others around the world have been remembering m’Duchess, my Little One, royalty in her own right. And I’d like to throw in my tuppence worth …

When I say “royalty”, I am of course referring to the esteem in which Helen is held in our business. Her nickname to many was Dame Helen (apologies, Dame Helen), and although we’ll never know now whether that would have become a reality, I think secretly, we do know.

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Anna Karenina As You Like It Damian Lewis Feed NHS Five Gold Rings Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Lucky Jim Medea MotherFatherSon Peaky Blinders Print Media The Deep Blue Sea The Late Middle Classes The Queen The Special Relationship Theatre Trelawny of the Wells Tributes Uncle Vanya

Helen McCrory, versatile actress who dominated the stage and shone on screen in Peaky Blinders and The Queen – obituary

On April 18, 2021May 18, 2021 By helenistic No Comments

The Telegraph’s Charles Spencer put her in his ‘pantheon of actors whose name in the programme always creates the anticipation of pleasure’

ByTelegraph Obituaries | April 18, 2021 | The Telegraph

Helen McCrory, who has died of cancer aged 52, made her name as a subtle and intelligent stage performer, and later bucked the trend that consigns actresses to oblivion in middle age, becoming one of Britain’s most sought-after television stars in her 40s.

In the first decade of the new millennium she was hailed as one of the most promising presences in British theatre. Writing in the Telegraph in 2002, Jasper Rees placed her in the tradition of Judi Dench, Zoë Wanamaker and Imelda Staunton as “the small, punchy actress with a voice that can coat a back wall in honey from 100 paces.”

Continue reading Helen McCrory, versatile actress who dominated the stage and shone on screen in Peaky Blinders and The Queen – obituary

As You Like It Medea Print Media The Deep Blue Sea Tributes

Rufus Norris: ‘In 15 years, I would have loved to have directed Helen McCrory as Prospero’

On April 18, 2021April 20, 2021 By helenistic No Comments

The Artistic Director of the National – Where McCrory Performed Her Last Major Plays – Recalls the Actor’s Sense of Wickedness and Mischief

by Rufus Norris | The Telegraph | April 18, 2021

Helen McCrory in Medea at the National

Few actors can stand by themselves on the Olivier or the Lyttelton stage and leave an audience thinking: if you are the only thing going on, then I’m happy. Helen McCrory was one of those actors. She appeared eight times at the National Theatre, most recently in Euripides’s Medea and in Terence Rattigan’s The Deep Blue Sea, and she had a rare ability to inhabit and communicate what a character was feeling right to the back of the stalls. People talk about actors having natural magnetism but Helen was simply really, really good at what she did. Her death at the age of 52 has left the industry in utter shock.

Helen adored working at the National. We would often meet for a coffee and discuss parts she might play and, like everyone, I was extremely keen to get her and Damian in a production together. She had tremendous range, just at home with new work such as The Last of the Haussmans – Stephen Beresford’s look at the after effects of the Sixties’ in which Helen played the exasperated daughter of a hippie – as with the classics.

Continue reading Rufus Norris: ‘In 15 years, I would have loved to have directed Helen McCrory as Prospero’

Damian Lewis Feed NHS Personal and Family Life Print Media Tributes

John Vincent, CEO of Leon Restaurants, Reflects On Helen McCrory

On April 18, 2021April 19, 2021 By helenistic No Comments

FeedNHS Partners

by John Vincent, Chief Executive of LEON | The Telegraph | April 18, 2021

In the last year, Helen McCrory became a close colleague as we worked alongside her, her husband, Damian Lewis, and actor Matt Lucas on the #FeedNHS campaign. At the height of the first lockdown we spoke nearly every day and served over a million meals to NHS workers on the frontline.

On Friday afternoon, I was in my office when I heard the news.

My immediate thought was, no, they’ve got that wrong. People must have confused her with someone else. Just the day before, I had been writing about Helen, Damian and Matt, for Letters From Lockdown, a compilation of notes to two children about people’s lives in the past year. How could it be that she had passed away? I was shocked.

I didn’t know Helen was ill. I don’t know how long she was receiving treatment, nor what type of cancer she had. Part of me wondered if I should have known, if other people knew and I didn’t. Was there something I missed?

Print Media Skyfall Tributes Uncle Vanya

An Explosive Energy: Sam Mendes Pays Tribute to Helen McCrory

On April 18, 2021April 19, 2021 By helenistic No Comments

Whether Acting in Chekhov on Stage or a Bond film, the Star – Who Has Died Aged 52 – Was Incredibly Exciting to Watch, Remembers the Skyfall Director

by Sam Mendes | The Guardian | April 18, 2021

When I was directing Uncle Vanya and Twelfth Night as my final productions as artistic director of the Donmar in 2002, I asked Helen to play the role of Sonya in Uncle Vanya. Word came back that she would love to have a chat about it. She strode into my office, sat on the sofa and immediately told me I had it all wrong. She told me she should be playing Yelena – the other young female role – and then proceeded to spend the next hour telling me exactly why. She left the room with the part. This has never happened to me before or since. All I can say by way of explanation is that it just felt inevitable. She was clearly already half way to giving a superb performance, I simply had to get out of the way and let her complete the job. Which, of course, she did – with utter brilliance.

Continue reading An Explosive Energy: Sam Mendes Pays Tribute to Helen McCrory