Damian Lewis Interview for The Misanthrope
By Dominic Cavendish, The Telegraph, November 24, 2009
Damian Lewis talks about appearing with Keira Knightley as she makes her West End debut in an updated version of Moliere’s The Misanthrope.
Damian Lewis could well be the luckiest actor in London. Or the unluckiest. Luckiest in that he’s about to play the lead in The Misanthrope, which – with tickets flying out of the box-office at record-breaking speed – must be accounted one of the most eagerly awaited West End openings of the year. Unluckiest because the main reason for all the mounting hullabaloo is his co-star – Keira Knightley.
While there’s no disputing the combined allure of the assembled cast – Tara Fitzgerald and Dominic Rowan are also names to conjure with – when it comes to added spice, Knightley’s promised theatrical debut is eye-wateringly hot stuff. The prospect of a live encounter with the ravishing Pirates of the Caribbean star, recently ranked the second highest paid actress in Hollywood, has tipped the internet exchange price for tickets into triple figures. We’re potentially in the same realm of hysteria as that which enveloped Jude Law’s Hamlet, when fans queued through the night for a chance to bag a day-seat.
If the flame-haired Lewis, 38, feels any anxiety or concern about the fact that Knightley looks set to be the centre of much frenzied attention in the coming weeks, he’s not confessing to it when we meet. His last stage appearance, as the inwardly tortured businessman Karsten Bernick in Ibsen’s Pillars of the Community earned him rave reviews at the National in 2005. The part of the people-hating Alceste – the biliously witty anti-hero reconceived as a hip playwright in Martin Crimp’s smart update of Moliere’s 1666 classic comedy – should cement his reputation as one of theatre’s finest talents. But will he get his chance to capitalise on the opportunity?
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As he calmly downs a pint of Guinness in the pub next door to the show’s Bloomsbury rehearsal rooms, Lewis radiates only relaxed enthusiasm for the project, which he had a hand in getting off the ground and which will mark his own West End debut. When Keira came on board, then, of course it became an ‘event’,’ he says. And pauses. ‘I can only say that I think it’s fun to be part of these things.’
He is immediately generous about Knightley’s aptitude for the role of the fickle, bitchy movie star Jennifer (Celimene in the original). ‘I have to say she has been a delight to work with,’ he says. ‘Her instinct is unbelievably good for someone who hasn’t been on the stage professionally. That’s not surprising. She grew up in the theatre, after all – her mother is the playwright Sharman Macdonald and her father the actor Will Knightley – and she’s proving to the manor born so far as I can tell.’
‘She has taken on this role with a great deal of humour about her current position in the industry,’ he continues. ‘She’s a young film icon, for heaven’s sake. She’s the face of Chanel. And she’s playing a character who’s going to fascinate and intrigue and appal us. She must have experienced a lot of that world in her own life, to some degree, so she understands the part and completely gets it.’
The misanthropic Alceste is full of ire about the shallowness and insincerity of society, qualities he believes are embodied by Jennifer. Unfortunately he has fallen in love with her, and can’t let his head rule his heart. That’s what makes the story so appealing for Lewis. You think it’s a play that operates only on the surface, but the more you work on the text, the more complex and ambiguous it turns out to be. As much as it attacks insincerity, flattery and hypocrisy, it’s also a play about love.’
Lewis, who resolved on becoming an actor as a schoolboy at Eton, left the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 1993 with his mind very much set on conquering the stage. ‘My heroes were all in the theatre. I wanted to be part of that great tradition that ran back to Garrick and Macready and Kean. That’s what I wished for, when I was asleep and dreaming.’ And yet, despite early successes as Laertes opposite Ralph Fiennes’ Hamlet and a respectable stint at the RSC, it was television that had claimed him by the end of the decade. In particular it was Steven Spielberg, who plucked him from relative obscurity to play the leading role of Major Richard Winters in the HBO series Band of Brothers, who transformed his career prospects.
He marvels again at the moment he got the call-up: The whole journey started in a casting basement in Soho, on a rainy day, going in to read some pages in front of a camcorder with some guy doing the other lines. I didn’t really know the importance of the project. It only really hit me when I was flown straight to LA for a meeting with Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg. It was all very heady and very exciting.’
Lewis’ stoical, ineffably melancholy portrait of courage under fire was nothing less than a tour de force, and brought home to a younger generation the valour of those who fought and died to liberate France in 1944 (in this case, the men of E Company of the 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment). And while he made further strong impressions in Britain with another mini-series, ITV’s remade Forsyte Saga, in which he starred as the rich, reptilian Soames, America wanted to see more of him. Hence, a much marvelled-over performance as the damaged-deranged father of a missing girl in the art-house film Keane – and the lead-role of Charlie Crews in the cult NBC police drama series Life, about a detective released from prison after a miscarriage of justice who seethes with insightful, vengeful and perturbed energies.
Life was perfect,’ Lewis beams. What I look for as an actor is behavioural complexity and that role contained that in spades.’ He relocated his family – actress-wife Helen McCrory and two young children – to LA for the two series’ duration and lived the dream. Aside from the work, the whole experience was everything I could have wanted it to be – it was a wonderful adventure.’
Like Knightley, then, he has experienced the Hollywood high-life from the inside. Is there a part of him that has experienced an Alceste-like revulsion at the shallowness of it all? I don’t set myself up to be one thing or the other,’ he says, because I will only end up contradicting myself. There have been times when I have enjoyed the frippery and sheer 15-minuteness of it all – the instant gratification and the superficial glamour of it – but there are moments when I’m just as strongly pulling in the other direction and rejecting it all as shallow, silly and insincere.’
I’m no more or less antisocial than the next person,’ he reflects. It’s important to me, though, that I’m at the right end of the acting spectrum. 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.’ He smiles. I can be a little bit misanthropic about that, I suppose.’
- The Misanthrope previews from 7 Dec, opens 17 Dec. Tickets: 0844 871 7612. themisanthropelondon.com; Life – Series 2 is released on DVD on December 28
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