Damian Lewis
There is a latent anger in a lot of people that went to boarding school at an early age. I was eight. And I loved it over the five years, but I think the adjustments for eight-year-olds are a lot. And I think it informs who you are for a long, long time.Collection: Anger
Temperamentally I'm not a natural producer, because I don't have the patience.Collection: Patience
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.Collection: Attitude
Seeing a man praying to Allah is enough for some people to assume he is a terrorist.
I am Damian Lewis, not Daniel Day-Lewis.
People need revelation, and then they need resolution.
'24' had to withstand accusations of being right-wing, but 'Homeland' is a far more liberal show.
I think you can't be really posh and be an interesting actor. I'm a bit of a posh rough.
My background was fairly conservative, and I think there's a strong notion of duty in a background like that, and I don't think that's always helpful.
I'm no more or less antisocial than the next person.
A cricket ball broke my nose when I was a kid so I couldn't breath through it. Before I had it operated on I used to stand on stage with my mouth slightly open.
I think people like to be scared. I think people like tension and suspense in a movie.
For me the rehearsal period is the part I most enjoy. It's the creating of the story.
The best shows succeed because they tap into a national conversation.
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.
I don't believe Jesus was the son of God, although I'm inclined to think he might have been a great prophet.
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!'
Acting can be a narrow and isolated experience, because you only examine your particular part.
I just try to live my life every day by doing the right thing.
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 not very good at strategizing.
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.
You have to go where the good writing is.
You just have to take control of your own performance.
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.
I've done classical theaters. I played Hamlet myself and Romeo.
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 know, I think I am faintly spiritual.
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.
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'm one of those pesky Brits.
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.
I've always been a narcissist.
I was, if you like, a successful schoolboy in that I had a degree of talent in all the required things that make you a success at school.
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 don't mean this grandly, but it was never my intention to live in L.A. and do a big network show.
I have a three-year-old and a four-year-old at home, and my mornings are about just dealing with the fact of that. I oddly enjoy it.
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.
I'm always forming bands.
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.
There are lots of different reasons to choose roles.
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.'
If you only do issue-based drama, you can become a boring wanker.
Dramatically it's always more interesting to conceal rather than reveal things.
Why do you think so many actors are only half-developed people? It's very easy when you're a young actor to have these intense, explosive friendships for short periods of time, because you can control what's shown of you. Then you go on to your next job and reinvent yourself again. I think it's important to find something constant.
L.A. still ranks as one of my guilty pleasures, along with butter-pecan ice cream and Coldplay albums.
My parents were incredibly inclusive.
The lesson I learned is that sometimes the task you have at hand needs all of your concentration and focus.
My heroes were all in the theatre.
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.