Damian Lewis: From Band of Brothers to Life to Stardom?

British actor Damian Lewis made an indelible mark on the hearts and minds of millions with his Golden Globes nominated portrayal of Major Richard Winters in the HBO mini-series Band of Brothers. Now in his second season of NBC's series Life, Damian Lewis has captured a new audience with his quirky, brilliant, thoroughly sexy character Detective Charlie Crews. To add to his growing popularity, the series has been picked up by ITV3 in the UK and will premier October 30, 2008.

The quintessential Englishman, London born Damian Lewis is a graduate of Eton College and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. After graduation from Guildhall, he was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. During a performance of Hamlet, Steven Spielberg who was in the audience noticed Damian Lewis and invited him to read for the role of Major Winters in Band of Brothers. This connection and his subsequent performance in the award-winning mini-series propelled Lewis into the spotlight and a permanent place in American film history. His American accent is so convincing that the majority of the U.S. audience did not realize that the sexy redhead was British.

Damian Lewis has not been resting on his laurels since his amazing success with Band of Brothers in 2001. Over the past few years, Damian has been working steadily on big screen projects such as Dreamcatcher, Keane, and An Unfinished Life, in which he appears with Robert Redford and Jennifer Lopez. In 2006, he completed work on the film The Baker, a comedy that was written and directed by Lewis's younger brother Gareth. In it, he plays a hit man trying to reinvent his life by relocating to a small village in Wales. Gareth Lewis received the award for Best Director at the 2007 Tremblant Film Festival for the film. Damian's most recent film is The Escapist, an Indy project also starring Brian Cox and Joseph Fiennes.

Without a doubt, Damian Lewis is an up and comer. Although his films have yet to match the success of his work in television, his performances have regularly received critical praise. It is just a matter of time before the role and the actor connect in such a way as to catapult him to the stardom his talent deserves. If you have not had the pleasure of his company, in addition to his role in Life broadcast Fridays on NBC, a number of his films and television appearances are available on Netflix.

Sources:

http://www.damian-lewis.com/

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0507073/