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.
Damian Lewis
Seeing a man praying to Allah is enough for some people to assume he is a terrorist.
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!'
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 am Damian Lewis, not Daniel Day-Lewis.
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.
I'm a slow starter.
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 don't believe Jesus was the son of God, although I'm inclined to think he might have been a great prophet.
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.
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 love going for a swim. Growing up in England, anywhere with a pool seems like the height of glamour to me.
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.
There's something important, as an actor, about allowing yourself to be approached by people to do roles. People see different things in you.
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.
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.
Acting can be a narrow and isolated experience, because you only examine your particular part.
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 just don't consider myself to be, you know, an American actor. I don't want that life.
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.
Dramatically it's always more interesting to conceal rather than reveal things.
You know, I think I am faintly spiritual.
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?'
The lesson I learned is that sometimes the task you have at hand needs all of your concentration and focus.
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.
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 parents were incredibly inclusive.
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.
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.
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'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.
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.
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.
There are lots of different reasons to choose roles.
I'm one of those pesky Brits.
If you only do issue-based drama, you can become a boring wanker.
My heroes were all in the theatre.
I've always been a narcissist.
L.A. still ranks as one of my guilty pleasures, along with butter-pecan ice cream and Coldplay albums.
Temperamentally I'm not a natural producer, because I don't have the patience.
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 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.'
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 done classical theaters. I played Hamlet myself and Romeo.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
My kids think America is swimming pools on the roof, screening rooms, and hot dogs. They love it here.
