Damian Lewis Quotes

"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've always been a narcissist."

"Acting can be a narrow and isolated experience, because you only examine your particular part."

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

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

"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'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."

"I love going for a swim. Growing up in England, anywhere with a pool seems like the height of glamour to me."

"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."

"The lesson I learned is that sometimes the task you have at hand needs all of your concentration and focus."

"Fallible characters are more interesting than superheroes in the end."

"You just have to take control of your own performance."

"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."

"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."

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

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

"I am Damian Lewis, not Daniel Day-Lewis."

"I want to do theatre and film and direct my own things and develop."

"You know, I think I am faintly spiritual."

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

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

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

"You know, this idea of going around the world imposing democracy by growing a middle-class, a trading merchant class that is independent of your faith, is a good notion, but we're all partially different - it's no good imposing systems on people that it doesn't suit."

"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."

"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 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."

"Producing is a world of compromise and actors are utterly spoiled all the time."

"I've done classical theaters. I played Hamlet myself and Romeo."

"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 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."