Top 124 Quotes & Sayings by Damian Lewis - Page 2

I suppose where I am sort of reflects the work I have chosen to do. Are there occasional frustrations because I can't work with a certain director because it's a big studio movie, and I don't have enough of a studio profile? The answer is yes. But generall... generally, I have the career I have chosen myself.

I'm one of those idiots; when I'm working in America, I wake up with an American accent and stay with it all day till make-up comes off.

It's important to have a big-enough house in order to have space.

I just try to live my life every day by doing the right thing.

I investigated post-traumatic stress disorder. I've been to a unit where people are suffering from it, and I read a lot of literature. I looked at footage of soldiers in the combat zone. I found 'Restrepo' to be unbelievably useful.

Television audiences are ruthless - look what happened to 'The Killing.'

I'm not averse to telling people off.

I'm very sad 'Life' wasn't a big hit, But it was undone by politics at NBC. It was intense. I moved my wife, and we had two children back to back. So working those hours and living abroad in L.A. was a handful. But it was a great experience.

My wife has a horror the children will start talking American if we spend too much time out there.

The irony is that, coming from a white-collar British background, I tend to play blue-collar Americans!

I found the hedge-fund guys I met all to be very, very concentrated listeners - watchful and articulate and quick to defend, if needed. They all seemed to have this contained sitting posture. The legs, if they weren't crossed at right angles, tended to be close over the knee, their hands put together.

I want to do theatre and film and direct my own things and develop.

Would I have traded 'Homeland' for anything else? No. Would I trade 'Billions' for anything else? No.

My kids think America is swimming pools on the roof, screening rooms, and hot dogs. They love it here.

It's successful, middle-class Arab men and women, professionals with seemingly happy family lives, who are prepared to go to paradise for a greater cause. That's terrifying.

I think very few people still understand the distinction between CEOs on Wall Street and the hedge-fund billionaires operating separately.

If you pick up an eighteenth-century play, at the top it says 'The Argument,' and then you have a list of characters, and then you have the play. I was just always struck by that - that, of course, good drama is about conflict.

I just don't consider myself to be, you know, an American actor. I don't want that life.

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

I found that the quality of TV material that came to me was so great and was just often better than the film material I got. And when I find a good movie that I really like, I jump on it because it's exciting to do.

I'm not good enough to flip in and out of my Brit accent to my American accent.

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.

I think people like to be scared. I think people like tension and suspense in a movie.

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.

My parents came to see me in a play at Eton when I was 16. And then, when I said I wanted to try for drama school, they knew there was enough passion there for them to be brave and back me.

Acting can be a narrow and isolated experience, because you only examine your particular part.

Fallible characters are more interesting than superheroes in the end.

If you have the same drive and passions that everybody else has - for example, if you're trying to do the right thing for your family and do the right thing for people you employ - then you can be forgiven quite a lot.

I've been careful to work with good people on interesting material, mostly.

It's such an overused phrase: 'to be part of the conversation.' But it's true. It is nice to be part of the conversation - just be sure they are talking about you in the right way.

I had no ambition to go to America and be in a TV show. It's not like I've rejected something or decided that I've found something better. Your life just takes you off in strange and different directions.

There's this sort of cloud that hangs where people are like: 'How long can you keep the heat of 'Homeland' going?' People have short memories is the truth, and Hollywood loves the new and shiny.

I remember, when I was doing 'Nicholas Nickleby', James Archer came to see me at the interval and said, 'My father would like to see you after the show.' It felt rather as if I had been summoned by the Queen, and I was cocky enough to think, 'Who the hell is he to summon me?'

An interesting insight into the ruthlessness of studio executives: I was having a conversation with Alex Gansa, a creator of 'Homeland,' and I said, 'So you guys must have seen 'Life' and liked me in it, right? That's the most recent thing I've done over here.' And he went, 'No, Damian. You actually nearly didn't get the job because of 'Life.'

There's a high head count on 'Homeland.'

I am extremely lucky, and I enjoy the level of work that I am able to work at.

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

Having been on a private jet only two or three times, it's one of life's great luxuries.

I will always find a defense for characters, and that's why it's fun playing characters that are morally ambiguous, or are at least perceived superficially as being problematic.

There is a machismo about an American male who is robust, athletic, able to build things, and he takes care of stuff. And it's a point of pride.

None of us, remember, knew that 9/11 was gonna happen. We didn't live in a state of anxiety and fear about Osama Bin Laden. The CIA might have, and they failed to prevent it. But the general public didn't have any knowledge. Now we have knowledge of it, and it's a very clear and present danger in our lives.

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.

That's all you can do as an actor - take the best thing available.

I'm very lucky.

All you should try to do is behave with honour. If you can. At all times.

I came of age as a male lead actor just as the TV landscape dramatically shifted.

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.

'24' had to withstand accusations of being right-wing, but 'Homeland' is a far more liberal show.

If you believe - which I do - that acting is a bit like advocacy for your character, then of course I want to find the positive points.

This high-end, novelistic form of TV, you know, is just peppered with despicable people who do marvelous things and marvelous people who do despicable things.

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.

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

I didn't know 'Homeland' was going to be 'Homeland.' I just did it because it was a terrific script, and they pitched me the story line, and I was like, 'Huh, that's interesting.'

When I was at drama school, I remember going to Amsterdam for new year and sitting with friends on the front of a P&O ferry in the wind, having some sort of 'Titanic' moment, declaring ourselves to be the new kings of theatre.

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

It's constantly fascinating for me that something that feels absolutely right one year, 12 months later feels like the wrong thing to do.

We are not telling Tudor history; we are creating ' Wolf Hall ' from novels, which are already a rereading of Tudor history.

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.

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

You never know when you're taking a job, ever... but you try to take good scripts. That's all you can do as an actor - take the best thing available. Even then, it's not [really] in your control. Certainly not in film and TV, because there are so many other elements. You just have to take control of your own performance.