Damian Lewis

Damian Lewis was born in London in 1971. Graduating from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Lewis began his career on the stage with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Appearances with the company included the role of Borgheim in Little Eyolf by Ibsen, and Posthumus in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline. Though a performance in the 1997 big screen adaptation of Robinson Crusoe gave Lewis a taster for the screen, it wasn’t until his appearance as Laertes in Jonathan Kent’s production of Hamlet that he made a move into film.

Director Steven Spielberg saw Lewis in Hamlet and was impressed enough to offer him a role in the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers and his career took off. With appearances in The Forsyte Saga, movies of Stephen King’s Dreamcatcher and the thriller Keane, as well as portraying Jeffrey Archer in a TV special Jeffrey Archer: The Truth, Lewis has established himself as an incredibly versatile and in-demand actor. Recent television appearances include his Emmy and Golden Globe-winning performance as Nicholas Brody in Homeland alongside Claire Danes and Bobby “Axe” Axelrod in Billions.

As well as appearances in screen, Lewis is a West End regular. His theatre credits include Five Gold Rings at the Almeida Theatre, Pillars of the Community at the National Theatre, The Misanthrope at the Harold Pinter Theatre, American Buffalo at the Wyndham’s Theatre and Martin Gray in The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? at Theatre Royal Haymarket.