British Actors You Should Know: Damian Lewis

Damian Watcyn Lewis, born in St. John’s Wood, London, in 1971, defines himself on his website as “an actor, dad, redhead, and ping-pong champion.” He’s the son of Charlotte Mary (née Bowater) and J. Watcyn Lewis, a City broker. His illustrious paternal ancestry includes a former Lord Mayor of London, Ian Frank Bowater, and his maternal ancestors include Bertrand Dawson, 1st Viscount Dawson of Penn (Doctor to the Royal Family in the 1930s), and philanthropist/shipbuilder Alfred Yarrow, who was of Sephardic-Jewish descent. He is proud of his Welsh ancestry on his father’s side and has an affinity for the Welsh language and culture.

Growing up, he attended boarding schools, making an early debut in a school production of The Pirates of Penzance at Ashdown House School, later forming his own drama club at Eton. At the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, his contemporaries included Ewan McGregor and Joseph Fiennes. He joined the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) where his roles included Laertes to Ralph Fiennes’ Hamlet.

Stephen Spielberg remembered that performance when he was casting for Band of Brothers, which led to Lewis’s big break in 1999, where he was nominated for a Golden Globe. It wasn’t the career path Lewis expected. He told The Guardian:” All my heroes and aspirations were in the theatre; I didn’t watch much TV growing up because I wasn’t allowed to ... So I went to the RSC and thought I was going to miss that moment. I thought I’d always be too big and fruity, too red for the camera.”