Damian Lewis

Damian Watcyn Lewis (born 11 February 1971) is a British actor and musician. He rose to prominence portraying U.S. Army Major Richard Winters in the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers. Lewis won a Primetime Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award for his portrayal of U.S. Marine Sergeant Nicholas Brody in the Showtime series Homeland, and received nominations for his performance as Henry VIII of England in Wolf Hall. He portrayed Bobby Axelrod in the Showtime series Billions in six out of seven seasons, and appeared in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019) as actor Steve McQueen.

Damian Watcyn Lewis was born on 11 February 1971 at St John's Wood, London, the eldest son of Charlotte Mary (née Bowater) and John "J." Watcyn Lewis, a City insurance broker with Lloyd's. His paternal grandparents were Welsh, and he says he considers himself "London Welsh". His maternal grandfather was Lt-Col. Sir Ian Bowater, Lord Mayor of London, and his great-great-grandfather was the eminent naval shipbuilder and philanthropist Sir Alfred Yarrow, 1st Baronet (see Yarrow Shipbuilders), who was of partial Sephardic Jewish descent. His brother is writer, producer, and director, Gareth Lewis. Lewis has said that he "went to English boarding schools and grew up around people very much like [his character] Soames and in a milieu very much like the Forsytes'".

As a child, Lewis made several visits to the US to visit relatives during summer breaks. He decided to become an actor at the age of 16.

He was educated at the independent Ashdown House School in Forest Row, East Sussex, then Eton College, and graduated B.A. from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 1993.

Lewis once worked as a telemarketer selling car alarms. His first television appearance was as a medical student in "Hickory Dickory Dock", a feature-length episode of Agatha Christie's Poirot, an ITV Studios TV production, broadcast in 1995. He also appeared as a rakish student in an early episode of the drama series A Touch of Frost (1996). He appeared in Robinson Crusoe (1997) as Patrick Conner.

At this time he was also working as an actor with the Royal Shakespeare Company, playing among other roles Borgheim in Adrian Noble's production of Henrik Ibsen's Little Eyolf and Posthumus Leonatus in William Shakespeare's Cymbeline. He would later go on to star in another of Ibsen's plays, as Karsten Bernick in Pillars of the Community at the National Theatre in November 2005.

He also appeared in Jonathan Kent's production of Hamlet, playing Laertes. This production was seen by Steven Spielberg, who later cast Lewis as lead role Richard Winters, respected leader of Easy Company in Band of Brothers (2001), the first role of several that required him to have a credible American accent.

He was in the 2000 series called Hearts and Bones as the love interest of Dervla Kirwan. Subsequently, Lewis portrayed Soames Forsyte in the ITV series The Forsyte Saga, which earned him positive reviews. He returned to the US to star in Dreamcatcher, a Lawrence Kasdan film about a man who becomes possessed by an evil alien. The character is American but when possessed he takes on a British accent. On the heels of this role, he starred in Keane as a Manhattanite with a fragile mental state who is searching for his missing daughter. Despite the film's poor box-office, Lewis's performance in the role was very well reviewed.