My wife is much more sensible and has much better taste than most people. -Damian Lewis
Happy Birthday, Helen McCrory!
A little note: This is a collective effort from the team in throwing a birthday party for Helen McCrory on the blog. Hope you all enjoy it!
It’s quite easy to figure out why Damian Lewis fell in love with his better half: Beauty, talent and brains, a rare combination, seem to have come together and stolen our guy’s heart. The couple has been together for more than a decade, married for 8 years — we, in fact, wished them a Happy Anniversary more than a month ago here and here — and going as strong as ever! Their affection for each other is very obvious, you can see in them that familiar comfort couples have with each other… And, the way Damian looks at Helen is very telling… He is so proud of her that makes him even say “I fully expect to be the butler to her Dame one day” to Kirsty Young on Desert Island Discs 🙂
Looking at any picture of the two of them together or seeing them on stage/screen together, their poetry reading at Cheltenham Literature Festival is a wonderful example of that, only seems to emphasize how good a match they are. In one fabulous interview with the two of them a couple of years ago, Damian asked jokingly, in response to something Helen said, ‘did that mean she wanted him to do the dishes for the week?’ and Helen responded ‘No, he could do bedtime’. Smart lady. As anyone with children will know that, depending on the day you have had, doing bedtime is potentially more exhaustive and troublesome than doing the dishes…
Knowing that Damian loves Helen and she loves him back make us LOVE Helen in the first place! Still, having gotten to know her a bit over the years through interviews makes us believe that she’s the kind of woman whose company we would really enjoy; in fact, in another life, we could easily have been friends.
So… Here’s our TOP 10 reasons to LOVE Helen McCrory! And, hey, feel free to add to our list or make your own list, too!
1. She’s not an island, but involved in the world around her. And, hey, she’s opionionated, too!
“I really, really want every single f—ing self-service till to be ripped out of the shops and people put back in. I want people to be fined for cancelling NHS appointments. I want the children I meet to be less interested in staring at a computer screen and more interested in talking to me.”
Once read about Helen’s thoughts about modern society, how many of you nodded your head in agreement with her and then absentmindedly picked up your phone/tablet/laptop/assorted various other technological gadgets because it is now simply second nature? Good on her for trying to ensure her children aren’t permanently glued to a computer screen/other gadget. It is not an easy rule to enforce given how rapidly technology is developing and a child’s need to be doing what their friends are doing.
2. She prefers funny over beautiful:
“I’d rather be considered funny by a man than beautiful. And humour has always ranked highly for me, too, when it comes to men. It was definitely Damian’s humour that I fell in love with first. Give me someone who can make me laugh and I’m prepared to go to the end of the world with him.”
3. She’s fearless about aging and ready to face it:
“Actually, I’m looking forward to being 50, because to me that’s when a woman is at the pinnacle of her femininity and her womanhood.”
“As I’ve got older, I feel more confident in my body, so wouldn’t want to tamper with it. Recently I was looking at myself in a scene of a film and thought: ‘My God — I’m the only one without Botox in that shot!’ You need to be able to face getting older.”
4. She’s honest about her marriage:
“It’s a very happy marriage. But not, of course, a fairy tale. We don’t skip around the house in gingham, with bluebirds in the kitchen. We can argue and don’t necessarily like each other all the time, but I have never felt anxious with Damian or thought for a single second that I wanted to be somewhere else.”
5. She’s a down-to-earth mother.
“We also worry terribly that they are growing up in a society that is about instant gratification. If something’s wrong – their appearance in a photograph, say – a child can now edit it to their liking or just press delete. But life’s not like that, is it? I don’t want my children growing up wanting to be perfect beings in a perfect world. I keep saying to them, ‘Darling, there are times you will be sad and unhappy and you mustn’t worry about it. Melancholia’s very interesting you know… you should read a bit of poetry.’”
6. She’s a feminist.
“…Financial independence means the marriage contract has changed. “Women don’t have to look for someone to pay the rent when they’re looking for a lover… The benefits of feminism for someone like my husband are fantastic. He can stay at home with the kids, he can take them to a park, he does the school run. He gets to know his kids because that’s expected of men now. No longer do fathers sit in the study and say: ‘Bring the children up with my gin and tonic and I’ll kiss them on the forehead.’ As much as he may ask, he’s not getting it.”
Oh, no, HE’S NOT GETTING IT 😀 I love it that, you, Damian, is married to a true feminist 🙂
7. She has her priorities set even on the day she and Damian are going to a state dinner hosted by President Obama at the White House!
“The actors were told by protocol officials to turn up at 7pm prompt and that make-up and hair could be arranged for them a few hours before.
‘We turned that down,’ says McCrory.
‘I’d never been to Washington before and wanted to hit the sights and see a couple of museums.
‘So we rushed back to the hotel five minutes before, jumped in the shower, got changed and ran down to the White House.”
Man, are you wizards or what, all of this in five minutes? Narcissa and her wand, I suppose 😀
8. She knows how to have a GOOD time!
We have recently found out about this sweet little video clip from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part II premier after-party. Pay attention and you will see Helen and Damian dancing in the very front. Hey, you two, hope the dance of your love lasts for the longest time!
9. She’s Aunt Polly for God’s Sake… and, in fact, much more than that…
Well, we have binge-watched the first two seasons of this BBC series in a week or so, and Helen’s Aunt Polly has left us in awe — craving for more. We cannot wait for Season 3 to be filmed this fall and hit our screens as soon as possible! The writing, the acting, the cinematography and THE MUSIC just rock!!!
In case you haven’t seen Peaky Blinders yet; in a nutshell, it’s a about Shelby family, a gangster family operating in post WWI Birmingham. Aunt Polly is the BRAINS of the family along with Thomas Shelby (Cillian Murphy) and she ran the “business” when the young guys were away at war. Polly has her own baggage, too; and she is a woman that you would not want to mess with… ever! Exactly like the woman who plays her! 🙂 And if you wanna find out about what happen to people that messed with her… Well, Peaky Blinders is available on Amazon as well as on iTunes!
At the same time Damian was telling us that his children thought he had won “an Emma” while he was putting in star performances as Nicholas Brody, he was also telling us how Helen is the cool one in the family. Quite simply because Helen had been in Harry Potter and Doctor Who and daddy just can’t compete with that. In Harry Potter, Helen played Narcissa Malfoy who in the end betrays Voldemort to ensure her son’s survival. Mummy is cool as cucumber indeed! In Doctor Who she plays Rosanna Calvierri who with her family is fleeing from the silence. Mummy dearest plans to turn Venice into food for her sons. We hope Gulliver is hungry! And, we have enjoyed and got excited over James Bond rumors, but hey Helen was already in Skyfall!
10. Finally, and probably more important than anything, Helen says THIS when asked about her most treasured possession and steals our hearts forever <3
“If the house burned down, there isn’t anything I would run in to fetch. I suppose I should say my wedding ring, but the truth is that I asked my husband to get me a wedding ring that was totally replaceable. It’s just titanium, light and unmarked. It’s the symbol of the ring that matters. I have never found ‘things’ important or interesting. My most treasured possession is my brain.”
Thank you, Helen! Happy Birthday — make it count!
Happy Birthday to a very inspirational and sassy lady!
Absolutely very-well said! Hope she has a wonderful birthday and they have sometime to celebrate it during the busy Billions shoot!