Tag: Top Moments 2020

TOP Damian Lewis Moments 2020: Hand in Hand

“She was unlike anyone I’ve ever met. She still is.” – Damian Lewis

Damian and Helen during Covid-19 lockdown, 2020

It is no secret we adore these love birds and we are extremely pleased to end the year, exactly like we did in 2015, 2016, 2017,  2018 and 2019  with our favorite Damian & Helen moments of 2020!

Well, it is obviously not easy to be two ridiculously talented and busy actors living together and raising a family. I remember Damian telling us at Cheltenham Literature Festival that the problem never goes away:

“When you’re two actors living together, you’re always asked to do work away from your home, so you just have to decide which ones are important enough to go and do away from home and try to spend the rest of the time together.”

While he needs to spend, give or take, half of the year in New York to shoot Billions, Damian goes back home often. Here is what he shares with The Evening Standard a few years ago about his commute between New York and London. Continue reading “TOP Damian Lewis Moments 2020: Hand in Hand”

TOP Damian Lewis Moments 2020: Philanthropy

There is no question that the last nine months have been different than any other for everyone. And so, for Damian, too, there was no filming, no going out in London, no theatre, no Wimbledon, no summer festival or live concert. l. But the good news is that the pandemic did not stop him from being very good at doing good.

We talked about Damian and Helen’s finest moment during the pandemic, Feed NHS, earlier here.

But then Damian wore his charity hat multiple times throughout the year for different great causes. And I think if Damian’s generous heart does not make a top moment, what else does?

So let’s start!

Continue reading “TOP Damian Lewis Moments 2020: Philanthropy”

TOP Damian Lewis Moments 2020: Theater of War UK – Philoctetes

Whenever I’m compelled to watch or read or listen to something out of our place and time, something “foreign”, I’m sent back to ninth grade, to when I first learned to read. No doubt I’d been deciphering the alphabet strung into words and sentences long before I turned 14, but ninth grade is the time, I think, when we really learn to read, if given the chance. To look at meaning between the lines, find the metaphors and the messages connecting one story to another to yet another and then back to ourselves.

And I’m brought back to my ninth grade teacher asking us “why do we read?” Maybe she was provoked by someone sighing too loudly at an assignment or maybe even muttering under their breath “why do we have to read this stuff?” She asked the question of us all and waited. Someone likely said “to pass this class so we can get into college” or “to write the paper, take the test, get the grade.” These answers didn’t satisfy her, so she waited and asked us again “why do we read?”

Continue reading “TOP Damian Lewis Moments 2020: Theater of War UK – Philoctetes”

TOP Damian Lewis Moments 2020: Run This Town

Run This Town featuring Damian Lewis as Rob Ford, the former mayor of Toronto, opened in NYC movie theaters on March 6, 2020 and went into history as the last movie I saw in a movie theater before the Covid-19 lockdown as well as the only movie I saw with a mask on!

Rob Ford was no ordinary mayor. He was regularly involved in controversy from 2010 to 2014 as he ran the city of Toronto. Ford was, in particular, repeatedly videotaped and photographed while intoxicated in public, culminating in his being recorded smoking crack cocaine as reported by the Kevin Donovan and Robyn Doolittle of the Toronto Star. The Star won the Michener Award, one of the highest distinctions in Canadian journalism, for investigative journalism. Continue reading “TOP Damian Lewis Moments 2020: Run This Town”

TOP Damian Lewis Moments 2020: New Project – A Spy Among Friends

Kim Philby is arguably the most famous – or should I say infamous? – secret agent of all times. He may not be as well known as James Bond, but in contrast to 007, Philby was a real-life spy and the most successful member of the Cambridge Five, a group of spies recruited by the Russians to pass information from the UK to the Soviet Union during the Second World War through 1950s. A charming and brilliant Cambridge graduate, he quickly rose to the top of the counterintelligence unit at the MI6. He became the head of the anti-Soviet unit, served as the MI6 chief in Istanbul and ultimately became MI6’s Washington-based liaison with the CIA. Having his confidantes at MI6 and becoming close friends with James Angleton, a rising star at the CIA . While his betrayal got some of his colleagues into big trouble and took several Soviet defectors to their deaths, nobody suspected Philby for years. And when some at the MI5 flagged him, his colleagues at the MI6 and the CIA came to the rescue. When they finally had the evidence to confront him, Philby had already provided secret information to the Soviets for 30 years!

How was Kim Philby able to deceive his colleagues, the people that were closest to him, the people whom he socialized with and, in particular, drank with – Philby was an alcoholic! – for decades? And, more importantly why? What was the main motive behind his decision to become a double agent? Continue reading “TOP Damian Lewis Moments 2020: New Project – A Spy Among Friends”