Damian Lewis | Biography, TV Shows, Movies, & Facts | Britannica (2024)

Damian Lewis (born February 11, 1971, London, England) is a British actor who is known for his trademark red hair, his impeccable American accent, and his wide-ranging roles, though he is perhaps most noted for his portrayal of military characters, especially U.S. Marine Sgt. Nicholas Brody in the television series Homeland.

Lewis had a privileged upbringing, spending his youth in the prosperous St. John’s Wood district of London. His father was a stockbroker, and his mother was descended from wealthy 19th-century newsprint manufacturers. At the age of 16, while enrolled at Eton College, he decided on a career in acting and was given permission to launch his own theatre company at the elite school. He graduated from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London in 1993 and then joined the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) at Stratford-upon-Avon and later performed in London.

His theatrical career blossomed when he played Laertes in the 1995 RSC London production of Hamlet (with Ralph Fiennes in the title role), which later moved to Broadway. Lewis appeared in the TV series Life Force (2000) and Hearts and Bones (2000–01), a dramatic romantic romp, before filmmaker Steven Spielberg cast him as a leading character, Maj. Richard Winters, in the highly acclaimed HBO World War II miniseries Band of Brothers (2001); Lewis was nominated for a Golden Globe for his stirring performance. In the TV miniseries costume drama The Forsyte Saga (2002–03) he portrayed the materialistic Soames Forsyte, and in the TV series Life (2007–09) he was a police detective, wrongly imprisoned for murder, who returns to the police force after being exonerated.

In 2011 Lewis made a splash on American television with his portrayal of Sgt. Nicholas Brody in Homeland. His character returns home following eight years of captivity in Iraq, a virtual stranger to his family and a worry to intelligence agents who fear that he has been turned by the enemy. For his riveting performance as the complicated and duplicitous Brody, Lewis received an Emmy Award (2012) for outstanding lead character in a drama series and a Golden Globe Award (2013) for best performance by an actor in a television series (drama). Lewis left Homeland in 2014, but he appeared again in a U.S. military uniform when he was cast as the Civil War general William T. Sherman in the TV miniseries To Appomattox (2015). He returned to his English roots in the TV miniseries Wolf Hall (2015) with a brilliant turn as King Henry VIII. In the American series Billions, which premiered in 2016, he portrayed Bobby (“Axe”) Axelrod, a scheming hedge-fund billionaire who takes delight in bedeviling U.S. Attorney Chuck Rhoades (played by Paul Giamatti); Lewis left the show after season five (2021).

During this time Lewis also appeared in films, including Dreamcatcher (2003) and The Escapist (2008). In 2016 he starred in the thriller Our Kind of Traitor. He later played Steve McQueen in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood (2019). Lewis’s other films included the dramedy Dream Horse (2020). He was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2014.

In 2007 Lewis married noted British actress Helen McCrory. The couple were together until her death from cancer in 2021.