Categories Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Interviews Print Media

Helen McCrory Comes Home for Harry Potter

Helen McCrory poses for a portrait shoot in London on March 10, 2008. (Chris Terry/Contour by Getty Images)

Helen McCrory is puffing away on a roll-up outside the Charlotte Street Hotel, in Fitzrovia, concentrating intensely on a new role. “I am not,” she tells herself sternly, “only a mother.” The trouble is that for the past year, motherhood is the only part the actress has played, attending to the serious business of taking ladybirds off leaves, then putting them back again, with her two tiny children. The glamorous location was a house by the ocean in Santa Monica, where the contented stay-at-home wife of Damian Lewis (who was working on Life, an NBC cop series) settled almost too easily into the pattern of strolling with her babies down to the sea every morning in “just a pair of knickers” (the kids, not their mother).

She was amazed by the relentless work ethic around her: Damian’s 80-hour weeks of filming, the stream of cars on the six-lane freeway every morning, heading off to serve the Yankee dollar. “And people there never complain,” she says, pouring our tea with vicarage aplomb. “It’s always about the beautiful day, never ‘Oh f***, I’ve laddered my tights!’ Everyone you meet in the playground has had the teeth done, the skin done, the hair done…”

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Categories Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Interviews Personal and Family Life Print Media The Special Relationship

Scotsman Interview: Helen McCrory

Whether it’s the former PM’s wife or an enchantress in Harry Potter, Helen McCrory approaches her roles with a light touch. And that attitude extends to family life

When I see Helen McCrory’s name attached to a project, a flash of happy anticipation illuminates my pleasure centre: I’m confident that whatever else, her performance will be worth the price of admission.

Phenomenal acting aside, she’s also a member of that special sisterhood whose magnetism crosses the gender divide, with a beauty all the more stirring for being tough to quantify. If pressed, I’d trace her charisma to the twinkle in her eyes and the wry smile tugging at her lips, hinting at secret knowledge – probably of the saucy variety.  

Off screen she does not disappoint. While there’s none of that faux best friend nonsense you get with some interviewees, she’s companionable and relaxed, tucking into a second cup of coffee with gusto – she’s only recently back on caffeine after weaning her youngest – and quick to laugh and tease.

This month we’ll see her in a far more high-strung persona, playing Draco’s mum, Narcissa Malfoy, in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. She approached the assignment with relish, keen to work with director David Yates. “Did you ever see (his] Sex Traffic? It was an absolutely fantastic film about two Polish girls forced into the sex industry in Britain.” Pregnancy prohibited her tackling the role of Bellatrix LeStrange, as was originally mooted some years ago and it went to Helena Bonham Carter, instead. Now, however, McCrory is able to play her sister.

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