Quotes By Damian Lewis

You know, I think I am faintly spiritual.

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?'

People need revelation, and then they need resolution.

I'm very lucky.

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.

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

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'm sponsored by Audi, so I have this rather lovely rather arrangement where they just insist that I'm always in the latest model.

You have to go where the good writing is.

You can't be sent away to prison for life and feel OK about it.

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'm no more or less antisocial than the next person.

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

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

If you only do issue-based drama, you can become a boring wanker.

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.

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.

There are lots of different reasons to choose roles.

What I do believe in is the moral code of Christianity.

It's good to be busy on a film set because there is a lot of sitting around, so if you've got two roles to play at one time, then that's great to do.

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

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

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!'

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

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

I love playing sport.

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.