Month: December 2016

TOP Damian Lewis Moments 2016:
Damian Storms Times Talks in NY!

source: Times Talks Program

I cannot agree more with Times Talks tag line: The brightest stars. The smartest conversations. And the very smart conversation that a very bright star, Damian Lewis, has with NY Times Culture reporter and new Carpetbagger Cara Buckley at Directors Guild Theater in New York marks yet another TOP Damian Lewis moment of the year!

source: Getty Images

Well, on the day the UK votes to stay in or leave the European Union, a conversation with a British actor calls for a question about Brexit. And that was Buckley’s opening question. And, somehow, the conversation turned more political than I thought it would and I enjoyed it immensely. We all know celebrities tend to avoid from getting involved in political conversation probably because they do not want to lose fans. And I understand that. On the other hand, one may be an actor, a doctor, a teacher, or anything else, but first and foremost we are all citizens and we have responsibility to speak our minds about issues that we care about. And just THIS, I believe, makes an individual, regardless of who she or he is, and regardless you agree with her or him, a good citizen of the world. Thus, I applaud Cara Buckley for her hard-hitting questions and Damian Lewis for speaking his mind thoughtfully, knowledgeably and graciously. He was certainly in TOP form providing compelling arguments along with brilliant humor that cracked up the room one too many times!

You know it is quite a task to turn a one hour and fifteen minute conversation into about 2500 words. But I have such delicious quotes from Damian that I would love to build the review around them.

Continue reading “TOP Damian Lewis Moments 2016:
Damian Storms Times Talks in NY!”

TOP Damian Lewis Moments 2016:
Sohana Research Fund

Sohana Collins, who gives her name to Sohana Research Fund, is a young teenager who was born with recessive dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa (RDEB or EB) which means she lacks the protein that holds her skin together. Kids with EB have extremely fragile skin that they are sometimes called “butterfly children.” Lots of activities we take for granted as easy routines in our daily lives are a struggle for them. Can you imagine a day where your dressing up takes up to two hours and eating and drinking cause blisters in your mouth and throat? These kids have to deal with this kind of pain every single day.

Continue reading “TOP Damian Lewis Moments 2016:
Sohana Research Fund”

Top Damian Lewis Moment 2016: Antony’s Speech for The Guardian

Today’s Top Moment of the year is one that still comes up in Damian’s Twitter timeline, many months after it was first released, a brilliant short video of Damian reading Marc Antony’s “Friends, Romans, countrymen” speech from Julius Caesar for The Guardian’s video series Shakespeare Solos. Several lit profs have tweeted thanks to Damian, remarking that they use his speech when they teach the play. Actually literature professors and acting teachers alike have found something remarkable in Damian’s prescient delivery. It’s a master class, both on the role of the speech within the play and on acting.

antonycollage

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Top Damian Lewis Moments 2016: “Blue Blood, Blue Collar” in The New Yorker

Continuing with Top Moments of 2016, I’m going to take us back to the start of this year, to an article published in The New Yorker. It’s a portrait of Damian Lewis, titled “Blue Blood, Blue Collar“, by Lauren Collins, the same writer we had seen in conversation with Damian at the New Yorker Festival late in 2015. Now, in case you haven’t figured it out from the sometimes pretentiously highbrow way I try to write, I’ve been a fan of The New Yorker for a really long time. I actually started reading as a 16 year old, finding my first copies in the community college library, getting that picture of all the great things to do and see in New York and feeding my imagination of one day living the life of a New York intellectual. (ICYMI, that didn’t happen. For me, at least.:))

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TOP Damian Lewis Moments 2016: Time Out London Spy Weekend

source: Damianista

Hey, it’s THAT time of the year again! We have “Best Of 2016” lists wherever we look: Best Books of 2016, Best Movies of 2016, Best Albums of 2016 and so on… And, it is our utmost pleasure to jump on the “Best of” wagon with our TOP Damian Lewis Moments of 2016! We’d just love to take the last ten days or so of the year to reflect on the wonderful year Damian has had personally and professionally and hope to make you re-live those moments and SMILE and SMILE BIG!

We don’t intend to rank the top moments as many “Best Of” lists do. And we just pick moments in which, we believe, Damian shines as a brilliant actor, a wonderful storyteller, a true gentleman or just a guy who knows to have a good time!

And we are kicking off our Damian Lewis TOP moments list today with Damian reading excerpts from John le Carré’s new memoir The Pigeon Tunnel at the Time Out London Spy Weekend in May. Continue reading “TOP Damian Lewis Moments 2016: Time Out London Spy Weekend”