Helen McCrory Archives - Page 17 of 91

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

Damian Lewis Feed NHS Print Media Tributes

‘In the last 12 months of her life, Helen McCrory used her power to help those who help us

On April 17, 2021April 20, 2021 By helenistic No Comments

In her final year, living with an illness she kept private, McCrory used her remaining energy to give back

by Guy Kelly | April 17, 2021 | The Telegraph

Helen McCrory and Damian Lewis launched a project to provide NHS workers on the frontline with hot meals. Lewis had just halted production on Billions and flown back from New York for lockdown; McCrory had paused filming the sixth series of Peaky Blinders. Parents to two children, they could have been excused a rest. Instead the couple’s campaign #FeedNHS raised more than £1m.

When Lewis announced that his wife of 14 years had died, aged 52, “after an heroic battle with cancer”, that campaign took on an added poignancy: in her final year, living with an illness she kept private, McCrory used her remaining energy to give back.

I interviewed McCrory and Lewis about #FeedNHS exactly a year ago. They were in lockdown in Sudbury, Suffolk, with their children, Manon, 14, and Gulliver, 12, and sounded less like television’s most eminent couple and more like professional fundraisers.

Continue reading ‘In the last 12 months of her life, Helen McCrory used her power to help those who help us

Print Media The Deep Blue Sea Trelawny of the Wells Tributes

Helen McCrory Remembered: ‘She had a brightness about her. She was a star’

On April 17, 2021April 19, 2021 By helenistic No Comments

Richard Eyre, the National Theatre Director Who Cast the Actor in Some of Her Earliest Roles, Pays Tribute to Her After Her Death

by Richard Eyre | The Guardian | April 17, 2021

Helen McCrory. ‘The trumpets will have sounded for her on the other side.’ Photograph: Antonio Olmos/The Observer

Part of the tragedy of Helen McCrory dying at such a young age, leaving a husband and two young children, is that professionally she had everything to look forward to. She had established herself as a very considerable actor in the theatre and on film and television.

She had a brightness about her, a luminosity: she was, in short, a star. She lit up a stage or a screen – you knew you were in the presence of a force of character and talent.

When I was running the National Theatre in the 1990s we cast her in a play about the theatre called Trelawny of the Wells – part comedy, part melodrama.

Continue reading Helen McCrory Remembered: ‘She had a brightness about her. She was a star’