Happy St. David’s Day, everyone!
Today is the Feast Day of St. David, the patron saint of Wales. Thus, in honor of the day, why not talk about Damian and his Welsh roots?
Here is Damian talking about himself as a “Londoner” and “British” at Times Talks London.
So far so good… Damian is proud of his Welsh roots, and we’re talking about Wales today! But… what do I talk about when I talk about Wales? What do I really know about Wales except the fact that Damian is half-Welsh? Well… I can drop a few Welsh celebrity names like a pro…Sir Anthony Hopkins, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Richard Burton, Gareth Bale… and, of course, the wonderful Denise Salway aka the “Knitting Witch” that creates the wonderful “Wolf Hall in Wool” collection and who made, for Damian, a special personalized gift!
At the end of the day, I don’t really know much about Wales, do I? 🙂
Here comes the research!
I first discover this lovely Wales tourism video! On the day that the international NATO summit of world leaders started in Wales in September 2014, and also because it was the first time ever that a sitting US president visited the country, the Welsh Government released a video in which celebrities extend a warm welcome to President Obama.
One of my favorite moments in the video is Matthew Rhys (aka Philip Jennings whom I love on The Americans) saying “Croeso i Gymru; no, I didn’t just cough. It means welcome to Wales. We mean that sincerely.”
And, we have our guy sitting in a local pub: “You might be wondering what a man with my accent is doing welcoming you to Wales… … I am half Welsh half English… my family always had a farm house in West Wales… and it is, I have to say, my favorite place on earth.”
Ah, and a moment with the great Bryn Terfel!!! I didn’t know he was Welsh, but I certainly adore the guy! Terfel sings “Irene’s Song” — remember the Forsyte Saga theme music? — so beautifully that gives me the goose bumps every single time I hear it! “Life is a dance we must learn…” Can you guess what my ringtone is? Yes, YOU CAN!
Now… Wales seems to be a REAL hidden gem.
Lush, green, dramatic landscape?
Check.
Crystal clear waters? Sandy, long beaches?
Check.
Beautiful, mysterious, magical, old castles?
Check.
Good-looking London Welshman welcoming me to Wales?
Check 🙂
Reading a bit more, I discover quite a few fun facts about Damian and his connections to Wales. Here they are — all collected from several interviews with Damian Lewis here, here, here and here.
Damian’s father is 100 percent Welsh: “On both side of his family, like so many of the Welsh did, they went across to Liverpool and Birmingham looking for work and all fell into Welsh communities and all married each other. My grandmother was a Welsh speaker. It’s in the blood.
I’m quite romantic about my Celtic roots. And although I went to school in England, grew up in London, we’ve always been made aware of Welsh roots by dad, who’s been very keen to stay in touch with his Welshness, even though he can’t speak more than five words of Welsh… It’s London-Welsh, I guess!”
Damian is a London Welshman exactly like, well, Henry VIII. “Myself I am London Welshman like the most notorious London Welshmen of them all (Henry VIII) I too have red hair – I am trying to keep my belly smaller than his and hopefully I will not need another five wives.” LOL This one is particularly priceless since Damian makes this comment back in 2013 not knowing he would bring us a fantastic portrayal of Henry VIII in Wolf Hall.
Damian is married to a half-Welsh girl 🙂 Helen McCrory is half-Welsh, she has a Welsh speaking mother that living in Cardiff. And, her grandfather was Welsh boxing champion, no less, Bobby Morgan.
Damian supports the Welsh rugby team. …which he describes as part of his brainwashing as child 🙂 “Otherwise my father would have taken the belt to me,” he says, and adds: “It was easy to support the Welsh rugby team in the 70s and it’s easy to support them now. There was a little moment in the middle when it wasn’t quite so.”
Damian and his brother Gareth made the utterly hilarious comedy The Baker in Wales. Gareth Lewis tells: “Our dad’s Welsh and we’ve been coming on holiday to Wales forever. Obviously I don’t know any hitmen, but we “come to Wales a lot as we have a house in Llandeilo. and it’s a case of write of what you know…I developed a naive urban view of a countryside being torn apart through the reality of what I saw in the villages and towns I knew. And I realised that a drama in a village is interesting because it’s so condensed. You can’t escape; I find that very interesting, that everyone has to put on a front.”
Damian loves coming to Wales. “I rush here to be honest. And I try to get my kids here as much as I can. They grow up in London. They are at London schools. I love getting them down here into Welsh countryside… We’re just on the Black Mountain… Our house… It’s… The air, here, tastes and smells like no other area in the world, and it, after three and a half hour journey from London, it’s, you just sort of drink it in… like a… like a… you know, a long needed pint.”
Lechyd Da, Damian 🙂
Wonderful! I don’t know much about Wales and look forward to reading this carefully.
I had looked up how to wish Damian happy birthday Feb. 11 in Welsh and posted on the Yahoo group:
Penblwydd hapus i ti, Damian!
(luckily there are pronunciation recordings and videos online for how to say it)
Such an interesting and magical sounding language!
I have mostly a Celtic ancestry – English, Irish, Scottish, German and Cherokee. Never heard of any Welsh in family tree.
Wales is so beautiful.
And there was a funny video I found of Welsh people and Londoners being interviewed on the street giving their opinions of each other. Sheep-shaggers and snobs came up but mostly it was good-humored.
I think that last picture of Damian with a pint is at the Ear Inn in NYC in the Soho area. It’s a really old bar/restaurant more to the west of Soho. I think an old sailor bar from long ago.
Thank you so much – I LOVED writing this post and in particular the fun facts about Damian!
Yes, Welsh sounds magical. I guess “y” is a vowel like in Polish.
Hearing Damian sing a few lines of a Welsh nursery rhyme at Cleo reading was so much fun, too!
Yes, it could well be Ear Inn. I checked and, bingo, it was established in 1817, too. I should go at some point to check it out. It has good reviews!
I haven’t been there in a very long time. I used to live nearby in Soho but moved in 1998. It was pretty funky when I used to go in the 1980’s and 1990’s but maybe they’ve spruced it up. It also had a little patio area outside. A bar, space for bands, some tables, very old, old things on the walls. I hope they hold on to some of these old places. NYC is slowly getting homogenized with big box stores and glass apartment buildings. We’ve lost many old “landmarks”. But the rents skyrocket and the owners can’t afford them. Maybe Damian was doing an interview there, I vaguely remember an article with that picture.
Yeah, New York is getting homogenized as it is getting gentrified. Still, it is the ONLY city that I can call home 🙂 I am a nomad, I am an immigrant so I can choose what is home for me in the US. And it’s New York and no place else. It is my most favorite place in the world so imagine my thrill when I found out about Billions! Damian Lewis and New York together in a show… and add to this game theory (which I did not know would play out in the show) which is my day job… It’s a miracle! 🙂 I can imagine Damian doing an interview there. The pic is not new, I usually use more recent pics but I wanted a pic with him and a beer so that one worked perfectly for my goal!
This article was so fun! Loved seeing a photo of him and his brother! Looks like handsome faces and gorgeous hair run in the family 🙂
Thank you! I really LOVE researching FUN FACTS about Damian and sharing them to turn all of us – quoting you “the tribe” – into walking Damian Lewis encyclopedias 🙂
Funny story about that!
So, a friend who also likes Damian posted on Facebook “Oh, Damian Lewis voiced a character on an episode of Phineas and Ferb!”
And I quickly replied “oh yes and he played a James Bond type character!”
Then a stopped a sec. Why. Why. Why do I know so much.
So I just posted, a few spaces down from my reply “Oh f*ck I am a scary fangirl…”
The tribe knows all.
I know. Sometimes if I have posted my knowledge about Damian and praising him, someone else will post, who are you, his PR people?
But then I think of my boss who probably knew all Brett Favre’s stats or whatever you know about football players and I think, hmph!, I guess this is what fans do. They know the stats.
In Manhattan, where I live, there is an unspoken rule of NYC cool that you do not bother or acknowledge celebrities. I am working on that. I am not originally from NY so it’s not in my blood. I think it’s okay to politely interact at a stage door but I’m trying not to bother them in their real life. I mostly just say “I love your work” and move on. Just in passing on the street. But I’m going to try not to even do that. It’s hard because I am a “super recognizer”, someone with a strong ability to recognize faces. So I easily see celebrities. But I am going to just say hello in my mind and not stare. NY cool.
Yes, of course, we all know the most about what we like the most! That’s so normal. When I wanted to start a blog but was a bit shy to do that and was second-guessing myself my husband told me: “Some people love golf, and you love Damian Lewis. What’s the difference?” And I will stay grateful to him forever because this is the hobby that I have enjoyed the most so far in my life!
We lived full time in NYC b/w 2001-2006 then moved to NC but did not give up on our tiny little apartment so we still spend all our breaks and many long weekends in NYC. That’s why I call myself a part-time NYer. Re celebrities: I have lived in the US the last 20 years but hey I am coming from Turkey. We are mediterranean people and can’t keep cool and just walk away when we see someone whose work we like. So I am not working on that at all. Hehe. And I am so glad I was shameless to wait for Damian for 10 hours on Billions set in February 2015 to let him know about the blog: https://www.fanfunwithdamianlewis.com/?p=8217
I can even say that was the best decision I have ever made.
I know exactly what you talk about when you say “super recognizer” because I also have good visual memory and never forget a face that I have seen earlier. I can forget names but never faces.
The tribe knows all – I LOVE THIS! Happy to be part of this amazing tribe! For me, getting to know quite a number of great fans thanks to Damian is the cherry on the cake! <3
As far as Wales, there is another famous person I became fascinated with – Tim Hetherington, a British war photojournalist who was killed in Libya in 2011 while covering the war there. I learned a lot about him. I even got his books and a biography. I became more interested in the military over time and I think it started with “Band of Brothers” which Damian stars in.
Just understanding what soldiers go through. Whether I agree with the war or not. Tim was depicting war on the human level. The soldiers and the civilians. There are a couple great documentaries with him – “Restrepo” and “Which Way is the Frontline from Here?”
But in “Which Way” they show that when he chose to go into photojournalism after some drifting, he studied at the University of Cardiff. They showed work he did as a student and interviewed his teacher there. So Tim got his start in his career in Wales. The teacher spoke of him so fondly.
He has a charisma like Damian and a way with people. Tim’s teacher said photography is about people and how you interact with them. He said Tim was good with people “with knobs on”.
He was also very articulate but in a very dangerous type of work. His close friend Sebastian Junger who made “Restrepo” with him and made “Which Way” about Tim, stopped doing war coverage after Tim’s death.
Damian seems to be cast a lot as a soldier. There must be something about him. He’s also in prison alot in roles and now has the threat of prison in Billions hanging over him.
I was in fact at Restrepo premiere at IFC Center in NY – see I spend a lot of time there! It’s a great documentary. And I know Damian talked about the documentary and Hetherington as a friend of his in one of his interviews and I think saw the film as part of his prep for Brody. I have great respect for journalists reporting from the war zone and filming there taking very very high risks. They are real heroes.
Did you see Tim there? I would have loved to have seen him in person. He also spoke and taught at the International Center for Photography at 43rd and Sixth Avenue. I’ve always had a fascination with what it would be like to be in prison or in war. Facing that kind of extremity. And Damian has played a number of prisoners and soldiers. So he has had to contemplate those experiences.
I am an idiot. I did see Restrepo separately much earlier, of course, and the premiere I saw at IFC was Which Way is the Front Line directed by Sebastian Junger. It’s about the life of Tim Hetherington. He was dead by then.
Missed this the first time round! I am a quarter Welsh, thanks to my Nan & her family being from the beautiful Rhondda valley. I am incredibly proud of that & support Wales in football & rugby, which often gets me a lot of stick from my English friends! However, as I explain to them, Wales feels like home. Whenever I go there on holiday I have a daft grin from the moment I see “Croeso y Cymru” – my boyfriend says he can see a difference in me when we are that side of Offa’s Dyke. My dream is to live in my beautiful homeland one day. Until then; “bore da. Dydd gwyl Dewi Sant hapus. Cymru am byth”.
Love this, Vicky! And I love it that Damian is proud of his Welsh roots, too. I know he supports Wales in rugby, but he seems to be a bit torn about football. Haha. He may be having second thoughts after EuroCup 2016 😀 I hope your dreams about living in your homeland come true sooner than later <3
Love learning something new about our favorite actor. I, too, missed this post the first time around. But well worth the hidden gem 🙂
Thank you for calling this a “hidden gem” and making my day <3 I think I posted this on St David's Day last year. I guess you have not found out about us back then? Now that I am thinking about it, you were probably just finding out about the guy in Billions 🙂 What a difference a year makes!
Yes. I didn’t discover your blog until either midway through #billions season 1 or at the end of season 1. And only discovered you through Instagram. Your blog and Damian himself are the two reasons I came back to Twitter after 6 years. I can follow your information faster on Twitter than on Instagram because of the alert notifications. I’m still learning Twitter. Make me laugh each time hear Twitter mentioned in #billions (season 1 by Chuck, season 2 by Axe). I haven’t gone back and read all the blog posts I missed from early-mid 2016. One day! Maybe keep sharing old ones for us newbies when appropriate? 🙂
Yeah, Twitter certainly gets mentions in Billions! 😀 “Next Lumber Liquidators?” I am glad I checked them, it turned out to be a real scandal!!!!
We have been around since January 2015 so there is a number of old posts that deserve to be re-posted when the time is right. Summer is usually slower so we will certainly do some re-posting then. Damian is keeping us quite busy these days 😀