Top 60 Damian Lewis Quotes

In the end, there’s something of the puritan work ethic about me that roles really must sustain me on an intellectual level.

There are jobs that come along in your life, if you’re lucky enough, that elevate you in a considerable way. And ‘Homeland’ was definitely one of those jobs.

I don’t believe Jesus was the son of God, although I’m inclined to think he might have been a great prophet.

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 loved doing ‘Homeland.’ I loved playing Brody.

I don’t mean this grandly, but it was never my intention to live in L.A. and do a big network show.

It’s constantly fascinating for me that something that feels absolutely right one year, 12 months later feels like the wrong thing 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’m one of those pesky Brits.

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.

No Western government has ever played the long-term in terms of foreign policy.

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’m always forming bands.

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.

My heroes were all in the theatre.

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

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 grew up in London, one of four children. We were a very loud family, not a lot of listening, plenty of talking. My mum was a hearth mother: she loved to gather us all around her – Sunday lunches were a big thing. She was very good at thinking on her feet – people used to say she should go into politics.

Temperamentally I’m not a natural producer, because I don’t have the patience.

Dramatically it’s always more interesting to conceal rather than reveal things.

I’ve always been a narcissist.

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.

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.

My parents were incredibly inclusive.

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

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

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

I’m not an American, but I have this weird connection to America in different ways through my dad living here for five years, my godfather being an American who I’m very close to.

I’m no more or less antisocial than the next person.

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.

L.A. still ranks as one of my guilty pleasures, along with butter-pecan ice cream and Coldplay albums.

You have to go where the good writing is.

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.

Seeing a man praying to Allah is enough for some people to assume he is a terrorist.

You know what it’s like to feel anxious – it’s horrible feeling anxious. It’s stressful having that feeling, having butterflies in your stomach, even for a day, and you don’t sleep at night.

I’m a slow starter.

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!’

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

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.

There’s a high head count on ‘Homeland.’

That’s all you can do as an actor – take the best thing available.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

We had a good time mucking about during ‘Band of Brothers’ when we were young and single.

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

When I’m working in America, I wake up with an American accent and stay with it all day till makeup comes off. I just want everyone to be at ease, and not have the show’s creators think, ‘Oh my god, he’s so English, why did we hire him?’

I love playing sport.

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.

I was, if you like, a successful schoolboy in that I had a degree of talent in all the required things that make you a success at school.

I am Damian Lewis, not Daniel Day-Lewis.

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?’

You just have to take control of your own performance.

You can’t do something that is morally vacuous or dysfunctional and then write it off saying, ‘It wasn’t my film, I was just doing a job in it.’

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

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

A lot of these American actors have this – in my view – misplaced view that they have to look like Action Man. The trouble is, they all run the risk of being interchangeable.