Damian Lewis has come a long way since he first started acting. The British performer is currently estimated to be worth at least $15 million. This is after dozens of stage, film, and TV credits in his career, which kicked off in earnest in 1993 – in the TV movie titled Mickey Love.
Lewis gained global recognition for his portrayal of U.S. Army Major Richard Winters in Band of Brothers, a mini-series that aired on HBO in 2001. This role earned him a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor. He reportedly landed the part after a drunken screen test with now-billionaire director Steven Spielberg, who essentially gave the actor his big break on television. After his star turn in Band of Brothers, the floodgates of opportunities really opened up for Lewis.
He was a star attraction on Showtime’s hit action drama Homeland, and more recently, won widespread acclaim for playing Bobby Axelrod in the network’s financial drama series, Billions. Fans of the latter were disappointed when it was announced that he would be leaving the show following the tragic passing of his wife Helen McCrory early last year. In such a short span of time since that major decision, Lewis’ overall net worth remains intact.
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Early Life
Damian Lewis was born on February 11, 1971, in St. John’s Wood, London, England, the eldest son of Charlotte Mary and John Watcyn Lewis, a City insurance broker with Lloyd’s. Damian’s grandparents on the paternal side were Welsh. Lewis went to several English boarding schools during his youth. As a child, he also made several visits to the U.S. to visit relatives during summer breaks from school. He became interested in acting at age 16 and was educated at the independent Ashdown House School in Forest Row, East Sussex, before going on to Eton College and graduating from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 1993.
Damian Lewis Career
After graduating from drama school, Lewis worked as a stage actor for the Royal Shakespeare Company. He played Boeheim in Adrian Noble’s production of Henrik Isben’s “Little Eyolf,” Posthumus in Shakespeare’s “Cymbeline,” and starred in another Isben play, “Pillars of the Community,” at the National Theatre. During this time, he worked as a telemarketer selling car alarms to help pay bills.
His first TV appearance was as a student in an early episode of the English drama series “A Touch of Frost” in 1993. In 1997, Lewis played the part of Patrick Conner in “Robinson Crusoe.” Next up, he appeared in Jonathan Kent’s production of “Hamlet”, where he played Laertes. The production was seen by Steven Spielberg who later cast Lewis as Richard Winters in “Band of Brothers,” the first of many roles that required Lewis to have a believable American accent. In the 2000 series “Hearts and Bones,” he was cast as the love interest of Dervla Kirwan. After that, he appeared in the ITV series “The Forsyte Saga,” which gained him some attention and positive reviews.
Lewis then returned to the US to star in “Dreamcatcher,” a Lawrence Kasdan film about a man who becomes possessed by an alien. The character is American, but when possessed, he takes on a British accent. Up next, Lewis starred in the film “Keane” as a Manhattanite with a fragile mental state who is searching for his missing daughter. “Keane” opened to poor box office numbers, but his performance was well-reviewed. It was 2001 when Lewis was cast as Maj. Richard Winters in the highly acclaimed HBO drama series “Band of Brothers.” Lewis’s performance earned him a Golden Globe nod.
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Since 2004, he’s appeared in a number of films including “Much Ado About Nothing.” “Stormbreaker,” “Friends and Crocodiles,” and “Have I Got News for You.” In 2008, Lewis starred as Charlie Crews in the US TV series “Life” on NBC. The show won an AFI Award in 2008 for Best Television Series and was met with much critical acclaim, but was still eventually canceled by NBC. The next year, he appeared in “The Baker,” a film directed by his brother Gareth Lewis. Lewis then had a supporting role in “The Escapist,” which he also helped produce. In 2009, he led the cast in Martin Crimp’s “The Misanthrope,” which opened in December 2009 at the Comedy Theatre in London. Other famous cast members included Keira Knightley and Dominic Rowan. In 2010, Lewis played Tory Prime Minister Simon Laity in two seasons of “Number 10” on BBC Radio 4. In 2011, Lewis played the role of Gareth in the film “Will.”
Damian Lewis Left ‘Billions’ At The End Of Season 5
For five seasons between 2016 and 2021, Lewis portrayed an ambitious and self-absorbed billionaire hedge fund manager on Billions. It is a role that he has become really synonymous with.
“When I’m walking down the street in New York, it’s: ‘Axe, you the man!'” he told the New York Times in an interview last year. “He’s a really despicable human being, but no one seems to care.” That particular interview came in the immediate aftermath of the revelation that he would not be returning for Season 6 of the show. Lewis had taken the time to discuss his own future, and that of Billions, post-Axelrod.
Season 5 finally saw Bobby give up on the constant back-and-forth battle between him and New York AG Chuck Rhoades (Paul Giamatti), and run into hiding. As Axe is on the run, Lewis himself will be spending more time at home with his two kids. Their mother succumbed to breast cancer in April last year. As much as it was for creative reasons, this sad tragedy confirmed the actor’s decision to walk away from Billions at the end of Season 5.
Homeland
It was later that year that Lewis earned the starring role as Gunnery Sergeant Nicholas Brody in the Showtime series “Homeland.” Lewis earned an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Television Series Drama, and the Dorian Award for TV Performance of the Year for his work on the show. He was nominated for a second Emmy in 2013.
Immediately after the end of “Homeland”, “Lewis appeared in “Romeo and Juliet” as Lord Capulet and in 2015’s “Queen of the Desert” and “Wolf Hall”.
Other Work
Later in 2016, Lewis starred in the big-screen thriller “Our Kind of Traitor.” In 2017, it was announced that he would have a role in the gender-flipped installment of the “Ocean’s 11” franchise, “Ocean’s 8.” In 2019, Lewis played Steve McQueen in Quentin Tarantino’s Oscar-nominated “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood.” In 2020, Lewis co-starred alongside Toni Collette in the sports-comedy drama film “Dream Horse,” which received generally favorable reviews.
Personal Life
Damian was married to actress Helen McCrory from 2007 until her death in 2021. They have two children together, Manon (b. 2006) and Gulliver, (b. 2007.) The family resides in a Victorian townhouse located in Tufnell Park, north London. They bought the house in 2007 from fellow British actor Hugh Laurie. Hugh learned of this fact when Damian called and said “I know this is weird, but I have just bought your house and I am sitting in your bedroom”. He proceeded to ask Laurie whether or not he should accept the part on what became NBC’s “Life”. Season 5 finally saw Bobby give up on the constant back-and-forth battle between him and New York AG Chuck Rhoades (Paul Giamatti), and run into hiding.
As Axe is on the run, Lewis himself will be spending more time at home with his two kids. Their mother succumbed to breast cancer in April last year. As much as it was for creative reasons, this sad tragedy confirmed the actor’s decision to walk away from Billions at the end of Season 5.
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Damian Lewis’ Net Worth Remains The Same As
By the time he was leaving the Showtime series, Lewis was earning a handsome $250,000 per episode. Translated to about the 12 episodes in a regular Billions season, the 50-year-old is due to missing out on about $3 million a year moving forward.
That is a significant amount, which will eventually impact his net worth negatively. In the interim, however, there isn’t much of a difference between his total assets’ value last year and today. In any case, the London-born artist left the door open to a future return to Billions, even if in a limited capacity.
Brian Koppelman, the co-creator of Billions, also insisted that the option of a return remained open to the exiting star. “The goodbyes… and the hellos on Billions are never permanent; nothing is etched in stone,” he said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. “But that said, Damian’s time as a regular on Billions has come to an end.”
This month, Lewis will celebrate his 51st birthday alongside his teenage daughters.
Damian Lewis Is Set To Headline ‘A Spy Among Friends
Lewis’s return to the UK does not mean that he is putting his career completely on hold. He is currently involved in the production of A Spy Among Friends, an espionage mini-series based on the 1992 Ben Macintyre novel of the same name.
Damian Lewis will again be playing a headline role, this time as Nicholas Elliott, a former, real-life MI6 spy. Joining him on the cast will be Guy Pearce (The King’s Speech, The Hurt Locker) as Kim Philby, Elliott’s friend, and colleague who defects to the Soviet Union.
The show is currently in production in London and is set for release later in the course of the year. For fans who cannot wait to see Lewis back on their screens, they will be able to catch him as Nicholas Elliott on BritBox in the UK and Spectrum’s on-demand platform in the US.
The drama series is set in the Cold War era and will consist of only six episodes. Details of Lewis’ pay for the production are not yet publicly known, but it will definitely go some way towards making up for any lost future income from Billions.