Damian Lewis

Actor

1971-02-11

Quotes by Damian Lewis

• If you think you don't want to play another psychopath, but the script is amazing, and the director is fantastic, and the story is incredible, then you may end up playing your third psychopath in a row.

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• I'm sponsored by Audi, so I have this rather lovely rather arrangement where they just insist that I'm always in the latest model.

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• I'm a slow starter.

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• I remember, when I was doing 'Nicholas Nickleby', James Archer came to see me at the interval and said, 'My father would like to see you after the show.' It felt rather as if I had been summoned by the Queen, and I was cocky enough to think, 'Who the hell is he to summon me?'

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• I think people like to be scared. I think people like tension and suspense in a movie.

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• There are ways of avoiding becoming tabloid fodder and therefore giving people license to pry into your private life. And there's a distinction between being an actor and being a celebrity. You may become a celebrity through acting, but you don't need to do so.

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• Seeing a man praying to Allah is enough for some people to assume he is a terrorist.

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• It's certainly true that I was brought up in that British amateur tradition, the one which always held that if you were reasonably good at cricket, knew one or two Latin texts and a few zingy Oscar Wilde quotes for dinner parties, you were pretty much ready to go and run some outpost in Hindustan.

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• I've discovered just how symbiotic the relationship is between writers, directors and actors. They ask the same questions and strip down texts in exactly the same way.

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• When I was at drama school, I remember going to Amsterdam for new year and sitting with friends on the front of a P&O ferry in the wind, having some sort of 'Titanic' moment, declaring ourselves to be the new kings of theatre.

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• It's an unfair comparison because when things are developed in the UK, they're developed at script stage only.

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• I'm very sad 'Life' wasn't a big hit, But it was undone by politics at NBC. It was intense. I moved my wife, and we had two children back to back. So working those hours and living abroad in L.A. was a handful. But it was a great experience.

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• Quiet people, people who aren't given to emotional outbursts, people who are economic with words - they're also fun to play, but you find yourself needing a laser precision in those roles. Otherwise you just sort of stand around, looking slightly brain-dead. You worry about being uninteresting.

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• I found the hedge-fund guys I met all to be very, very concentrated listeners - watchful and articulate and quick to defend, if needed. They all seemed to have this contained sitting posture. The legs, if they weren't crossed at right angles, tended to be close over the knee, their hands put together.

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• The irony is that, coming from a white-collar British background, I tend to play blue-collar Americans!

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• In England we burnt redheads at the stake, because we thought they were witches. There are still young redheads in Britain getting ripped for having red hair. 'Oy, Ginger!'

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• '24' had to withstand accusations of being right-wing, but 'Homeland' is a far more liberal show.

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• It's constantly fascinating for me that something that feels absolutely right one year, 12 months later feels like the wrong thing to do.

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