Damian Lewis Quotes

When I'm working in America, I wake up with an American accent and stay with it all day till makeup comes off. I just want everyone to be at ease, and not have the show's creators think, 'Oh my god, he's so English, why did we hire him?'

I always resented Tom [Hardy] for turning up on Band Of Brothers and getting the girl - in fact, the only girl in a cast of hundreds of smelly men! I, on the other hand, spent eight months with my face squashed up against someone else's backside in one sodden trench after another. And it looks as if Tom might have got the girl again [in Colditz], damn his eyes.

No Western government has ever played the long-term in terms of foreign policy.

For me the rehearsal period is the part I most enjoy. It's the creating of the story.

In the end, there's something of the puritan work ethic about me that roles really must sustain me on an intellectual level.

The lesson I learned is that sometimes the task you have at hand needs all of your concentration and focus.

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.

You know what it's like to feel anxious - it's horrible feeling anxious. It's stressful having that feeling, having butterflies in your stomach, even for a day, and you don't sleep at night.

I've had loss in my life, and I like to think my mother's energy lives on in some faintly Buddhist way. I do find some comfort there.

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!'

A lot of these American actors have this - in my view - misplaced view that they have to look like Action Man. The trouble is, they all run the risk of being interchangeable.

I've always had a 'Work hard, play hard' attitude to life - I still do - but sometimes you get involved in something that needs a calm, methodical approach.

You can't be sent away to prison for life and feel OK about it.

I love going for a swim. Growing up in England, anywhere with a pool seems like the height of glamour to me.

I'd lived in LA for two years and I said to my agent that I wouldn't do any more network TV, because my family and I had just made the decision to live in England. It would be a whole year in LA shooting network TV.

I guess I'm just good at playing repressed individuals. I'm lucky because those are often the roles that catch people's eyes.

I'm a slow starter.

Producing is a world of compromise and actors are utterly spoiled all the time.

I'm not an American, but I have this weird connection to America in different ways through my dad living here for five years, my godfather being an American who I'm very close to.

You have to go where the good writing is.

I've done classical theaters. I played Hamlet myself and Romeo.

I'd feel guilty just doing gags.

Temperamentally I'm not a natural producer, because I don't have the patience.

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

Of course the lower classes have always felt downtrodden and aspired to a better life. But there is this theory that people respond to a class structure in England - there was a time when people knew who they were and knew whom they served and as long as management wasn't abusive, it was a good life for people.

I love playing sport.

I'm not very good at strategizing.

I think you can't be really posh and be an interesting actor. I'm a bit of a posh rough.

Writing and directing might be a red herring, and really I'm just re-examining what it is to act, to do it well and do it properly.

I don't believe Jesus was the son of God, although I'm inclined to think he might have been a great prophet.

What I do believe in is the moral code of Christianity.

You can't do something that is morally vacuous or dysfunctional and then write it off saying, 'It wasn't my film, I was just doing a job in it.'

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.

The best shows succeed because they tap into a national conversation.

It's good to be busy on a film set because there is a lot of sitting around, so if you've got two roles to play at one time, then that's great to do.

You just have to take control of your own performance.

You know, I think I am faintly spiritual.

I've always been a narcissist.

There's something important, as an actor, about allowing yourself to be approached by people to do roles. People see different things in you.

L.A. still ranks as one of my guilty pleasures, along with butter-pecan ice cream and Coldplay albums.

I want to make a clear distinction between people who take acting seriously and people who call themselves actors because they've been on reality TV or something.

I'm always forming bands.