Quotes By Damian Lewis

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.

It's an unfair comparison because when things are developed in the UK, they're developed at script stage only.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

There are ways of avoiding becoming tabloid fodder and therefore giving people license to pry into your private life. And there's a distinction between being an actor and being a celebrity. You may become a celebrity through acting, but you don't need to do so.

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.

I'd feel guilty just doing gags.

You just have to take control of your own performance.

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.

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.'

My heroes were all in the theatre.

I think you can't be really posh and be an interesting actor. I'm a bit of a posh rough.

I've always been a narcissist.

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'm one of those pesky Brits.

I think people like to be scared. I think people like tension and suspense in a movie.

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

For me the rehearsal period is the part I most enjoy. It's the creating of the story.

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!'

You know, I think I am faintly spiritual.

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

People need revelation, and then they need resolution.

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.

I'm very lucky.

The best shows succeed because they tap into a national conversation.