Top 124 Quotes & Sayings by Damian Lewis
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an English actor Damian Lewis.
Last updated on December 23, 2024.
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'm not very good at strategizing.
What I do believe in is the moral code of Christianity.
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.
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 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'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.
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.
The best shows succeed because they tap into a national conversation.
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.
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.
I love playing sport.
I'm always forming bands.
People need revelation, and then they need resolution.
L.A. still ranks as one of my guilty pleasures, along with butter-pecan ice cream and Coldplay albums.
It's sad that children don't spend enough time looking around and being amazed by what's in the real world.
There are lots of different reasons to choose roles.
Dramatically it's always more interesting to conceal rather than reveal things.
In the end, there's something of the puritan work ethic about me that roles really must sustain me on an intellectual level.
We had a good time mucking about during 'Band of Brothers' when we were young and single.
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.
No Western government has ever played the long-term in terms of foreign policy.
There are jobs that come along in your life, if you're lucky enough, that elevate you in a considerable way. And 'Homeland' was definitely one of those jobs.
Temperamentally I'm not a natural producer, because I don't have the patience.
I went to boarding school, and what that teaches you is to cope emotionally at a young age and to suppress a lot of emotion. Being in the army is, in a way, similar.
I grew up in London, one of four children. We were a very loud family, not a lot of listening, plenty of talking. My mum was a hearth mother: she loved to gather us all around her - Sunday lunches were a big thing. She was very good at thinking on her feet - people used to say she should go into politics.
I'm one of those pesky Brits.
I love going for a swim. Growing up in England, anywhere with a pool seems like the height of glamour to me.
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'd feel guilty just doing gags.
I went to boarding school from the age of eight - first to prep school, then to Eton. One thing that kind of education teaches you is community living: there's little retreat. That's why people come out of it and talk about lifelong friendships forged in the furnace.
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 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.'
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.
You have to go where the good writing is.
It's an unfair comparison because when things are developed in the UK, they're developed at script stage only.
I've always been a narcissist.
I don't mean this grandly, but it was never my intention to live in L.A. and do a big network show.
For me the rehearsal period is the part I most enjoy. It's the creating of the story.
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 a slow starter.
You know, this idea of going around the world imposing democracy by growing a middle-class, a trading merchant class that is independent of your faith, is a good notion, but we're all partially different - it's no good imposing systems on people that it doesn't suit.
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?'
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.
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've done classical theaters. I played Hamlet myself and Romeo.
If you only do issue-based drama, you can become a boring wanker.
The lesson I learned is that sometimes the task you have at hand needs all of your concentration and focus.
I don't believe Jesus was the son of God, although I'm inclined to think he might have been a great prophet.
My heroes were all in the theatre.
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.
You know, I think I am faintly spiritual.
You just have to take control of your own performance.
I'm no more or less antisocial than the next person.
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.
I loved doing 'Homeland.' I loved playing Brody.
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 guess I'm just good at playing repressed individuals. I'm lucky because those are often the roles that catch people's eyes.
My parents were incredibly inclusive.
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