Damian Lewis: The Life Story Behind Homeland's Star

Very few actors get one role that defines them. Damian Lewis has had four, in four different kinds of work, and each one is so distinct that audiences who love one of them sometimes do not recognise him in the others. He was Major Richard Winters, the quiet American officer in Band of Brothers, leading men through D-Day and Bastogne. He was Nicholas Brody, the damaged Marine in Homeland, a man who might be a hero or a traitor, and nobody, including Brody himself, seemed sure which. He was Henry VIII in Wolf Hall, a king whose charm and cruelty lived in the same smile. And he was Bobby Axelrod in Billions, a billionaire hedge-fund manager who treats the law as a suggestion. Four roles, four countries of the imagination, one actor. The question is how a boy from St John’s Wood, educated at Eton and the Guildhall, became the man who could play all four, and the answer is a career built slowly, on the stage, in the kind of patient way that British actors are taught and American television rewards.

St John’s Wood, Eton, and a City Family

St John’s Wood, an affluent area of north-west London, gives 11 February 1971 as Damian Lewis’s birth date, and the family he was born into was part of the City of London in a way that shaped his early life. His father, John Lewis, worked as an insurance broker in the City, and his mother, Charlotte, was a housewife. His grandfather was Sir Ian Bowater, a former Lord Mayor of London, which meant the family had a long history in the Square Mile and in public life. Lewis grew up with an older brother, William, and a younger sister, Amanda, in a comfortable household where education was taken seriously. He was sent to boarding school from a young age, and he attended Eton College, one of Britain’s most famous schools, a place that teaches confidence as much as it teaches Latin. He has said his childhood was comfortable, and that the boarding-school experience gave him independence early. After Eton, he studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, graduating in 1993, and the training there was practical and rigorous: voice, movement, and the study of classic plays, with an emphasis on the actor’s ability to work in a company. He then joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, where he performed in plays by Shakespeare and others, learning the discipline that would serve him for the rest of his career.

Band of Brothers: Major Winters and an American Accent

In 2001, Lewis was cast as Major Richard Winters in Band of Brothers, the HBO miniseries produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks about Easy Company, a unit of American paratroopers in the Second World War. The part was a remarkable piece of casting: an English actor, educated at Eton, playing an American officer from Pennsylvania, and doing it so convincingly that American audiences assumed he was American. Winters is a quiet, decent man, a leader who earns his men’s loyalty by sharing their danger rather than by shouting at them, and Lewis played him with a stillness that made the character’s courage feel real rather than heroic. The series followed Easy Company from training in Georgia through D-Day, the Battle of the Bulge, and the end of the war, and it is now regarded as one of the finest television series ever made. Lewis’s performance was central to that reputation, because Winters is the moral centre of the story, and the audience has to believe in him for the whole series to work. The accent was a particular achievement: Lewis worked hard on the American accent, and it was so convincing that many viewers were surprised to learn he was British. Band of Brothers made him known in America, and it gave him a reputation as an actor who could carry a major production, but it did not make him a star overnight. The years that followed were spent in British television and film, building on the reputation the series had given him.

The Forsyte Saga, Life, and the Long Middle

Between Band of Brothers and Homeland, Lewis built a career in British television and in American series that never quite made him famous. In 2002 he played Soames Forsyte in The Forsyte Saga, the ITV adaptation of John Galsworthy’s novels about a wealthy family in Victorian London, a part that required him to play a man whose possessiveness destroys his marriage. In 2005 he played the lead in Colditz, a drama about prisoners of war, and in 2007 he began playing Charlie Crews in Life, an NBC series about a detective who returns to the police after twelve years in prison for a crime he did not commit. Life ran for two seasons, from 2007 to 2009, and it gave Lewis a chance to play a leading man in American television, a detective who is eccentric, funny, and haunted by the years he lost. The series did not find a large audience, and it was cancelled, but Lewis’s performance was praised, and it showed that he could carry a series on his own. He also appeared in films during these years, including Dream Horse in 2020, in which he played a small part, and he worked on stage, returning to the theatre whenever he could. The pattern of these years is important: Lewis was a respected actor with a major credit to his name, but he was not a star, and the industry did not quite know what to do with him. That changed in 2011, when he was cast in a new series about a Marine who comes home from eight years as a prisoner of war.

Homeland: Nicholas Brody and the Emmy

Homeland began in 2011, and Lewis played Nicholas Brody, a United States Marine who returns home after eight years as a prisoner of al-Qaeda, and who may or may not have been turned into a terrorist. The part was a gamble for everyone: Brody is a character who lies to his wife, to his children, and to himself, and the audience is never quite sure whether he is a hero, a victim, or a villain. Lewis played that ambiguity with a precision that made the first two seasons of Homeland some of the most talked-about television of the decade. His scenes opposite Claire Danes, who played the CIA officer Carrie Mathison, were the centre of the show, and their relationship — part love affair, part interrogation — was what made the series work. In 2012, Lewis won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series for the role, and in 2013 he won the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Television Drama. The awards mattered, because they made him a star in a way that Band of Brothers had not, and they gave him the freedom to choose his next roles. Brody was killed off in the third season, a decision that was controversial with audiences, but it freed Lewis to move on, and the next role he took was one that no one expected: a king.

Wolf Hall: Henry VIII and the Charm That Kills

In 2015, Lewis played Henry VIII in Wolf Hall, the BBC’s adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s novels about Thomas Cromwell, and the part was a revelation. Henry VIII is one of the most famous kings in English history, a man who broke with Rome, married six times, and executed two of his wives, and he has been played by many actors, often as a large, shouting tyrant. Lewis played him differently: as a young, handsome, charming man whose cruelty was hidden inside his charm, and whose moods could change in a moment. His scenes opposite Mark Rylance, who played Cromwell, were a study in power: Cromwell is careful, watchful, and intelligent, and Henry is impulsive, vain, and dangerous, and the tension between them drives the whole series. Lewis was nominated for a BAFTA for the role, and the series itself won awards and was praised as one of the finest literary adaptations the BBC had ever made. The part showed a range that Homeland had not: Brody was a man who hid his feelings, Henry is a man who cannot hide his, and Lewis played both with equal conviction. It also showed that he could play a historical figure without making him a caricature, which is a harder thing than it looks, because the audience already knows how the story ends, and the actor has to make them care about the journey anyway.

Billions: Bobby Axelrod and the Art of Being Liked While Being Ruthless

In 2016, Lewis began playing Bobby Axelrod in Billions, the Showtime series about a billionaire hedge-fund manager and the prosecutor who tries to bring him down. Axelrod is a man who made his fortune in the financial markets, who gives generously to charity, and who breaks the law when it suits him, and Lewis played him as a person the audience could like even while knowing he was a criminal. The series ran for seven seasons, until 2023, and it became one of the most popular dramas on American television, with Lewis at its centre for most of that run. Axelrod is a very different kind of character from Winters, Brody, or Henry: he is a modern American, a self-made man, a person who believes that the rules do not apply to him because he is smarter than the people who wrote them. Lewis played him with a swagger and a humour that made the character entertaining even when he was doing terrible things, and the performance was a reminder that he could play comedy as well as drama. He left the series after the fifth season and returned for the final season, a decision that reflected the demands of the schedule and his desire to do other work. Billions made him a familiar face to a new generation of viewers, and it proved that he could carry a long-running series in the way he had carried Band of Brothers and Homeland.

A Spy Among Friends, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and the Music

Lewis has kept working in film and television alongside Billions, and the parts he has taken show the same range as his leading roles. In 2019 he played Steve McQueen in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Quentin Tarantino’s film about Los Angeles in 1969, a small part that required him to capture the cool of one of the most famous movie stars who ever lived. In 2022 he played Nicholas Elliott in A Spy Among Friends, a drama about the British spy Kim Philby, acting opposite Guy Pearce, and the series was praised for its writing and its performances. He is also a musician, and in 2023 he released an album called Mission Creep, a collection of songs that he wrote and performed, a project that surprised people who knew him only as an actor. The album is not a vanity project; it is a serious piece of work, and it shows a different side of him, a person who has always been interested in music and who finally had the time and the freedom to make a record. He has also performed live, playing small venues and festivals, and the music has become a genuine part of his life rather than a hobby. The combination — actor, musician, and a man who has played four of the most memorable characters in recent television — is unusual, and it is the reason his career is hard to summarise in a single sentence.

Helen McCrory, Family, and What Comes Next

Lewis was married to the actress Helen McCrory from 2007 until her death from cancer in 2021, and the marriage was one of the most respected partnerships in British acting. McCrory was herself a celebrated actress, known for her work on stage and in Peaky Blinders, where she played Polly Gray, and the two of them had two children, Manon and Gulliver. Her death was a public event, and Lewis spoke about it with a candour that moved many people, describing the loss and the grief in interviews that were notable for their honesty. He has since spoken about raising his children and about the importance of family, and he has continued to work, taking on roles that allow him time at home. He is in his fifties, he has an Emmy and a Golden Globe, he has played a soldier, a spy, a king, and a billionaire, and he has released an album. The career that began at Eton and the Guildhall, and that passed through the Royal Shakespeare Company and Band of Brothers, is still going, and the most interesting thing about it is that it has never settled into a single pattern. Lewis has played heroes and villains, Americans and Englishmen, historical figures and modern ones, and he has played them all with the same seriousness. The next decade will show what he does with that range, and whether he finds a fifth defining role to add to the four he already has.

The Stage, the Accent, and the Craft Behind the Four Roles

There is a technical fact about Damian Lewis that explains more than it seems to: he is one of the best mimics of an American accent working in British acting, and the accent is not a trick but a discipline. Winters in Band of Brothers speaks with a flat Pennsylvania accent, Brody in Homeland speaks with a Marine’s American English, and Axelrod in Billions speaks with the fast, confident American of a New York financier, and the three accents are different from each other in ways that an American audience can hear. Lewis learned the accents the way he learned everything else: by listening, by practising, and by treating the voice as part of the character rather than as a costume to be put on. The stage training at the Guildhall and the years with the Royal Shakespeare Company gave him the vocal control that makes this possible, because a classical actor learns to use the voice as an instrument, and to change it for different roles. He has returned to the stage throughout his career, performing in London and in the West End, and the stage work matters because it is where he keeps the craft sharp. Television and film can make an actor lazy, because the camera does the work of bringing the audience close; the stage does not, and an actor who keeps returning to it is an actor who cares about the work itself. Lewis is that kind of actor, and the four defining roles are the proof: each one required a different voice, a different body, and a different way of thinking, and he found all four inside himself.

Our Kind of Traitor, The Goat, and the Roles Between the Big Ones

In 2016, Lewis appeared in Our Kind of Traitor, directed by Susanna White and based on John le Carré’s novel, playing Hector, a British intelligence officer who recruits a young couple, played by Ewan McGregor and Naomie Harris, to help him bring down a Russian oligarch. The film is a spy thriller, but its subject is trust: Hector is a man who asks other people to risk their lives for a cause they do not fully understand, and Lewis played him as a person who is charming, persuasive, and morally ambiguous. The part was a supporting role, but it put Lewis in a le Carré adaptation, which is a particular kind of prestige in British acting, and it showed that he could play an intelligence officer as well as he could play a soldier or a king. In 2014 he appeared in The Silent Storm, playing Balor, a man who lives on a remote Scottish island with his wife, in a film about a marriage that is falling apart. The part was small, and the film did not find a large audience, but it showed that Lewis was willing to take on quiet, difficult work, and that he was not only interested in large productions.

In 2017 he returned to the stage in The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?, Edward Albee’s play about a successful architect who falls in love with a goat, playing Martin, the architect, opposite Sophie Okonedo as his wife. The play is a dark comedy about a subject that is, on its face, absurd, and the performance required Lewis to play a man who is, at once, rational and insane, and who destroys his family for a love that nobody can understand. The production ran at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in London, and it was praised for its performances, and for the courage of its casting: a play about bestiality is not an easy sell, and Lewis took the part because the writing was strong, which is the reason he has always given for taking a role. The stage work matters because it is where Lewis keeps the craft sharp, and because it shows that he is not afraid of difficult material. He has said that the theatre is where he feels most like himself, and that the screen, for all its rewards, is a different kind of work. The Goat, Our Kind of Traitor, and The Silent Storm are the roles between the big ones, and they are the ones that show how he actually works: he takes the part that interests him, he does it properly, and he moves on to the next one.

The Awards Beyond the Emmy: the Critics’ Choice and the Golden Globe

The awards Lewis has received beyond the Emmy tell the story of a career that was recognised quickly and has stayed recognised. He won the Critics’ Choice Television Award for Best Actor in a Drama Series in 2012 for Homeland, a prize voted for by television critics, which is a sign that the people who watch television for a living took his performance seriously. He was also nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Television Drama for Billions, a nomination that showed the industry still rated him as a leading man, years after Homeland had ended. Two major nominations, for two very different shows, in two different decades, is a record that few television actors can match, and it is the measure of how consistently good his work has been.

Billions was created by Brian Koppelman, David Levien, and Andrew Ross Sorkin, and it is loosely based on real life: the prosecutor Chuck Rhoades is modelled in part on Preet Bharara, the former United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Bobby Axelrod is modelled in part on the hedge-fund manager Steve Cohen. The series is about the law, about money, and about the people who believe the rules do not apply to them, and Lewis’s Axelrod is at the centre of it. The writing is sharp, the dialogue is fast, and the performances are the reason the series lasted seven seasons. Lewis has said the role was one of the most enjoyable of his career, because Axelrod is fun to play, and because the series gave him the chance to work with a large ensemble of talented actors, including Paul Giamatti as Rhoades. The two of them, Axelrod and Rhoades, are the engine of the show, and their rivalry is what kept audiences watching for seven years.

My Take:

The first thing I want to say about Damian Lewis is that he is the most versatile actor of his generation, and the proof is not in any single performance but in the list of them. Winters, Brody, Henry VIII, Axelrod: four characters who have almost nothing in common, played by one man, in the space of twenty years, each one convincing, each one memorable, each one the centre of a major series. Most actors get one role like that, if they are lucky. Lewis got four, and the reason is not luck but range. He can play a quiet American soldier and a loud English king, a damaged spy and a ruthless billionaire, and he can make each one feel like a real person rather than a type. That range is rare, and it is the reason directors keep casting him in leading roles: they know he can do it, whatever it is.

Band of Brothers is the performance I would show someone who wants to understand what Lewis does best, because Winters is a role that could easily have been boring. A decent, quiet officer who does the right thing is not, on paper, an interesting character. Lewis makes him interesting by showing the cost of decency: Winters is afraid, he is tired, he makes mistakes, and he keeps going anyway. The stillness of the performance is the point. He does not shout, he does not make speeches, and he does not ask the audience to admire him. He simply does the job, and the audience admires him for it. That is a harder kind of acting than playing a villain, because a villain has the audience’s attention for free, and a decent man has to earn it. Lewis earned it, and the series is still watched today partly because of him.

Homeland is the performance that made him a star, and it is the one I have the most complicated feelings about, because the show itself became less good as it went on, and Brody’s story ended in a way that many fans disliked. But the first two seasons are extraordinary, and Lewis’s performance in them is the reason. Brody is a man who lies to everyone, including himself, and the audience is never sure whether he is a hero or a terrorist, a victim or a villain. Lewis plays that ambiguity without ever tipping his hand, and the tension of not knowing is what makes the show work. His scenes with Claire Danes are some of the best television acting of the decade, because the two of them are playing a relationship that is also an interrogation, a love affair that is also a power struggle. The Emmy he won in 2012 was deserved, and it was a recognition that the industry had finally noticed what Band of Brothers had already shown: this was an actor who could carry a series on his own.

Wolf Hall is the role that surprised me most, because Henry VIII is a part that has been played so many times that it is hard to imagine anyone finding something new in it. Lewis found something new by playing Henry as a young man, handsome and charming, whose cruelty is hidden inside his charm. The Henry of Wolf Hall is not the fat, shouting tyrant of popular imagination; he is a man who can be delightful at dinner and terrifying five minutes later, and the change happens in his eyes before it happens in his voice. Lewis’s scenes with Mark Rylance are a masterclass in power: Rylance’s Cromwell is careful and watchful, Lewis’s Henry is impulsive and dangerous, and the tension between them is the whole series. I think it is the best thing Lewis has done, and I think it is the role that will be remembered longest, because it showed a range that Homeland and Band of Brothers had not.

Billions is the role I enjoy most, even though it is not the best thing he has done, because Axelrod is fun in a way that Winters and Brody are not. Axelrod is a billionaire who breaks the law and gives to charity, a man who believes the rules do not apply to him, and Lewis plays him with a swagger that makes the character entertaining even when he is doing terrible things. The series ran for seven seasons, which is a long time for any show, and it lasted that long partly because Lewis made Axelrod someone the audience wanted to keep watching. He left after the fifth season and came back for the last one, and the show was weaker without him, which is a tribute to how much he brought to it. The music he released in 2023, the album Mission Creep, is a different kind of pleasure: it shows that he is not only an actor but a person with other interests, and that he is willing to risk embarrassment by doing something new in public. I respect that, and I think the album is better than it needed to be.

The death of Helen McCrory is a subject I want to handle with care, because it is a real loss, not a plot point, and because Lewis has spoken about it with a candour that deserves respect. McCrory was a great actress in her own right, and their marriage was a partnership between two people who understood the same world. Her death from cancer in 2021 was a public event, and Lewis’s interviews about it were notable for their honesty: he did not pretend it was easy, he did not pretend he was fine, and he did not ask for sympathy. He simply described what had happened and what he was doing next, which was raising his children and continuing to work. That is a dignified response to a terrible event, and it tells you something about the man that no performance can. He has since spoken about the importance of family, and about the need to be present for his children, and that priority shows in the choices he has made since: fewer long absences, more time at home, and work that fits around his life rather than the other way around.

If I have a criticism, it is that Lewis’s film career has never matched his television career, and that is a shame, because he is good enough to carry a film. His film roles have mostly been supporting parts — Steve McQueen in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, a small role in Dream Horse — and none of them has given him the material that his television roles have. That is not his fault; it is the fault of an industry that does not always know what to do with a versatile actor who is not a movie star in the conventional sense. But it is a waste, and I would like to see him in a major film role, something that lets him use the full range he has shown on television. He is in his fifties, he is at the height of his powers, and he has the experience to carry a film. The industry should give him one.

Looking at the whole picture, I think Damian Lewis’s career is a model for how to build a lasting acting life. He trained properly, he worked on stage, he took the right television roles, he won the awards, and he kept his private life private until it became public through tragedy, which he handled with grace. He has played four defining roles, and he may yet play a fifth. The boy from St John’s Wood who went to Eton and the Guildhall became an actor who can play anyone, and the reason is not talent alone but discipline: he learned his craft, he kept practising it, and he never stopped taking it seriously. That is a story worth telling, and it is a story that has nothing to do with luck.

For anyone new to his work, start with Band of Brothers, because it is the role that shows what he does best, and then watch Wolf Hall, because it shows what he can do when the material is at its best. Then watch the first two seasons of Homeland, and notice how different Brody is from Winters, even though the same actor plays both. After that, watch Billions, which is the most fun, and listen to Mission Creep, which is the most personal. Those five pieces of work, taken together, give you the full range, and they show you why a boy from London became one of the most versatile actors of his generation.

The Goat is the role I would point to if someone asked me whether Lewis is brave, because the play is about a man who falls in love with a goat, and the part required him to play a successful architect who destroys his family for a love that nobody can understand. The production ran at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in 2017, opposite Sophie Okonedo, and it was praised for its performances, and for the courage of its casting. A play about bestiality is not an easy sell, and Lewis took the part because the writing was strong, which is the reason he has always given for taking a role. That is a brave choice, and it is the kind of choice that separates an actor who cares about the work from an actor who cares about his image. Lewis does not care about his image, or at least he does not let it decide what he does, and The Goat is the proof. He played Martin as a man who is, at once, rational and insane, and who cannot explain himself, and the audience watched a marriage fall apart in real time, because the actor made them believe it. That is acting, and it is the reason his stage work matters as much as his screen work.

Our Kind of Traitor is the film I would mention next, because it shows Lewis in a le Carré adaptation, which is a particular kind of prestige in British acting. He played Hector, a British intelligence officer who recruits a young couple to help him bring down a Russian oligarch, and the part was a supporting role, but it put him in a film with Ewan McGregor and Naomie Harris, and it showed that he could play an intelligence officer as well as he could play a soldier or a king. The film is a spy thriller, but its subject is trust, and Lewis played Hector as a person who is charming, persuasive, and morally ambiguous, a man who asks other people to risk their lives for a cause they do not fully understand. That ambiguity is the same quality that made Brody work in Homeland, and it is the same quality that made Henry VIII work in Wolf Hall: Lewis is good at playing men who are not quite what they seem, and who make the audience unsure whether to trust them. That is a rare skill, and it is the reason directors keep casting him in leading roles.

The Silent Storm is the last film I want to mention, because it is the smallest and the quietest, and because it shows what Lewis does when nobody is watching. He played Balor, a man who lives on a remote Scottish island with his wife, in a film about a marriage that is falling apart, and the part was small, and the film did not find a large audience. But the performance is honest, and it shows an actor who is willing to take on quiet, difficult work, and who is not only interested in large productions. An actor who will do a small film on a Scottish island, for little money and little attention, is an actor who loves the work, and that love is the reason his career has lasted. The soldier, the spy, the king, the billionaire, the architect who loves a goat, and the man on the island are all the same actor, and the thread that connects them is a willingness to do the work properly, whatever the size of the part, whatever the size of the film.

Frequently Asked Questions

How did Damian Lewis win an Emmy for Homeland?

He won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series in 2012 for playing Nicholas Brody, a Marine who returns home after eight years as a prisoner of war. He also won the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Television Drama in 2013 for the same role.

Was Damian Lewis really American in Band of Brothers?

No, he is English, born in St John’s Wood, London, and educated at Eton and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. His American accent as Major Richard Winters was so convincing that many viewers assumed he was American.

What role did Damian Lewis play in Wolf Hall?

He played Henry VIII in the BBC’s 2015 adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s novels, opposite Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell. He was nominated for a BAFTA for the role, and the series was praised as one of the finest literary adaptations the BBC had made.

How long did Damian Lewis play Bobby Axelrod in Billions?

He played Axelrod from the series’ start in 2016, left after the fifth season, and returned for the final seventh season in 2023. Billions is a Showtime drama about a billionaire hedge-fund manager and the prosecutor trying to bring him down.

Who was Damian Lewis married to?

He was married to the actress Helen McCrory from 2007 until her death from cancer in 2021. McCrory was known for her stage work and for playing Polly Gray in Peaky Blinders, and the couple had two children, Manon and Gulliver.

Did Damian Lewis release a music album?

Yes, he released an album called Mission Creep in 2023, a collection of songs he wrote and performed. He has also performed live in small venues and festivals, and music has become a genuine part of his life alongside acting.