Aunt Polly’s original reaction when son Michael came home was very different in Peaky Blinders
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Helen McCrory reveals the Peaky Blinders scene that was just too much for TV
Tag: Polly Gray
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Helen McCrory: ‘ I don’t think I’m deep enough to have mental-health issues’
On Badass Women and Being Married to Her ‘Best Friend’
by Gavanndra Hodge | The Telegraph | August 9, 2019
She’s straight-talking, hates housework, dresses to kill, and lives life her way – convention be damned. Turns out Helen McCrory has plenty in common with her badass Peaky Blinders character Polly.
Helen McCrory, the multiple-award winning actor, is holding what looks like a moist slice of turkey. ‘What is that?’ I ask. ‘It’s a face mask, darling. £1.99 from Superdrug,’ she says, rubbing it against her neck. ‘It’s going to make me look like a teenager.’
We are standing outside a café on the Regent’s Canal, cyclists and prams whizzing by. McCrory is wearing a floral tea dress, silver Zadig & Voltaire boots, sunglasses and a VIP wristband from a Bob Dylan concert she went to, five days ago. ‘I am never taking it off,’ she says.
There is a sort of rock-star swagger to Helen McCrory, 50, a charismatic, don’t-give-a-damn cool with her chipped red nails and posh-voiced sweariness. She likes to party, to wear top hats and vintage frocks, and there is the inevitable doubling of glamour that comes from her marriage to the actor Damian Lewis (Brody from Homeland, more recently Bobby Axelrod in Billions), with whom she lives in a tall, narrow house in Tufnell Park with their children Manon, 12, and Gulliver, 11.
Continue reading Helen McCrory: ‘ I don’t think I’m deep enough to have mental-health issues’
Categories Interviews Peaky Blinders Print Media
Helen McCrory on why she loves playing Peaky Blinders’ Polly Gray
Plus, why Aunt Polly is Misunderstood
by Megan Sutton | August 8, 2019 | Good Housekeeping
Although in real life most of us strive to be good citizens, for actors there’s lots of fun to be had in pretending to be someone with a darker side. That’s certainly true for Peaky Blinders star Helen McCrory, who much prefers playing a baddie.
“It’s much more fun, it’s loads of fun playing the baddie,” she told press including Goodhousekeeping.com/uk at a preview ahead of Peaky Blinders season five.
Categories Peaky Blinders Trailer Video
VIDEO: Peaky Blinders Series 5 Official Trailer
The Shelbys are back
BBC | You Tube | July 30, 2019
Categories Charles II aka The Last King: The Power and Passion of Charles II Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Peaky Blinders Print Media
Helen McCrory’s journey from playing a protective mother in ‘Harry Potter’ to gang matriarch in ‘Peaky Blinders’ has been phenomenal
The British actress has played a number of unconventional roles — each getting more ambitious than the previous one.
There are only a few actresses who have been able to portray a mother who commits heinous crimes while maintaining her image as the savior matriarch. Going by this record then, British actress Helen McCrory has time and again excelled in roles that proved a mother is not only committed towards the well-being of her children but can be selfish enough to disregard the affairs of the world solely for the benefit of motherhood. Her characters might not be diverse but the confined roles that she plays have been executed until the last morsel has been squeezed out of those characters.
At the moment, McCrory is best known for her role as the Shelby matriarch, Polly Grey, a gypsy woman who is able to talk to spirits but at the same time commits a murder in the cleanest possible way. Polly Grey is one of the leading women on BBC One’s ‘Peaky Blinders’ but unlike her fellow characters, Polly holds the upper hand when it comes to the Shelby family business. As the company’s treasurer, Polly decides where the money goes and what happens with it, and let’s keep in mind this is a woman who lives in the early 1910s, a time when due to World War I men were out in the battlefield and women for the first time were taking control over business.