Damian Lewis
Damian Watcyn Lewis, OBE is a British actor and producer. He was born on February 11, 1971 in St. John’s Wood, London, England, to Charlotte Mary (Bowater) and John Watcyn Lewis, a city insurance broker whose own parents were Welsh. Damian is a descendant of a number of prominent London citizens, including Ian Frank Bowater, his maternal grandfather, who served as Lord Mayor. He was raised on Abbey Road in London until the age of 8 with his siblings Gareth, William and Amanda. Beginning in 1979, he attended Ashdown House Boarding School in Forest Row, East Sussex and went on to Eton College where, at the age of 16, he formed his own theater company The Chameleons. After Eton, he took a year to travel in Africa and upon his return studied at Guildhall School of Music and Drama between 1990 and 1993. He began his work as a stage actor at Birmingham Repertory Theatre in Romeo and Juliet and Rope soon after he graduated from drama school. Damian did Moliere’s School for Wives at the Almeida, played the Dane himself in Hamlet at the Open Air Theatre and made his Broadway debut as Laertes to Ralph Fiennes’ Hamlet in 1995. Damian then joined the Royal Shakespeare Company until 1999 and received the Ian Charleson Award, rewarded annually to the best classical stage performances in Britain by actors under age 30, for his portrayal of Borghejm in Henrik Ibsen’s Little Eyolf. ...