Knickers in the post and the rather racy past of the hottest Brit in Hollywood

Those weary souls, trudging through Heathrow after emerging, blinking, from the Los Angeles red-eye, rarely cut the most hale and hearty of figures.
But if a touch of the leading man gloss appeared to have come off Damian Lewis as he exhaustedly navigated the arrivals hall earlier this week, he had a good excuse.
Because only a few hours earlier, in the faux Polynesian surroundings of Trader Vic's bar in Beverly Hills, his celebrations for landing a best actor Golden Globe were in full swing.

Actor Damian Lewis (left) and Helen McCrory arrive at the 69th Annual Golden Globe Awards in Beverly Hills, California

As the evening progressed, he first treated photographers to an excitable version of dancing 'Gangnam Style', in homage to the recent internet craze.
Then, in the presence of an A-list crowd, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Heidi Klum and Richard Gere, at an after-show party, he continued the festivities, bopping manically with his actress wife Helen McCrory to a series of rock 'n'  roll numbers.
So, it would hardly be surprising that he gave every impression of nursing a sore head as he wandered through Heathrow, still  carrying his creased Tom Ford tuxedo over his shoulder.

 

But who could blame 41-year-old London-born Damian for wanting to celebrate? After all, in the wake of his award for his role as a former Marine-turned-traitor in the U.S. hit series, Homeland, headlines in America are calling the red-headed actor everything from Hollywood's most bankable leading man to the new Steve McQueen.
Rather than milk the adulation, however, the Old Etonian was booking himself on the first available flight back to the family home in London he shares with Ms McCrory and their two children, daughter Manon, six, and five-year-old son, Gulliver.
All of which gives a rather poignant insight into the tortured flip-side of Damian's Hollywood dream.

Homeland with Damian Lewis as Nicholas Brody and Claire Danes as Carrie Mathison

Damian Lewis holds up the award for outstanding lead actor in a drama series for his role in Homeland at the Primetime Emmy Awards in Los Angeles in September

British actor Damian Lewis starring in in the hit U.S. drama Homeland

For while his children remain in the UK with their mother at their large family house, he spends five months of the year in the U.S. filming Homeland, in which he stars with blonde actress Claire Danes.
And this week, in a moving interview with Vogue magazine, he revealed just how hard it is to be parted from his family to pursue his glittering career.
Speaking of his son, the heart-throb said: 'I was talking to Gully about something different and suddenly, without looking at me, he said: “D'you know, Dad? When you're away, sometimes I look out of my bedroom window at night and I call your name and I cry.” I wrestle with this.'
It is a conflict, those close to him say, that resonates particularly with Damian because he has yet fully to come to terms with the death of his mother, Charlotte, in a car accident 12 years ago.
Indeed, in his emotional Golden Globes acceptance speech, he told the star-studded audience: 'I want to dedicate this to my mum, who is up there somewhere, looking down and bursting with pride.'
She was killed while holidaying in India with Damian's father, former City insurance broker Watcyn, who dragged his 63-year-old wife from the wreckage but was unable to save her life.

In a moving interview with Vogue magazine, Damian Lewis revealed just how hard it is to be parted from his family to pursue his glittering career

It is a measure of his continuing grief that Damian has barely spoken about his mother's death.
And while the actor's proud father — who watched the awards on television at his West London home — chatted happily to me about his son this week, he, too, remains  unable to discuss their loss.
'My wife would have been very proud,' Mr Lewis told me. 'She wasn't an actress and had no connection with the theatre other than she loved it, and we took Damian and our other kids to the theatre when they were young.
'Damian started acting at prep school, and we would go together to watch him in his school productions and we both thought he was very good. My wife was very supportive of him becoming an actor.'
For his part, Damian's biggest regret is that his mother, who had been twice-married, never saw him achieve big-time success.
In a rare interview, he recently said: 'My mother's death is the single most important thing that's happened to me in my life. Father was with her. It was a terrible, terrible thing to happen to him.
'My brothers and sisters were scattered everywhere. My brother Gareth was in Russia, I was in  LA and my other brother and sister, William and Amanda, were at home. My mum was a beautiful, gorgeous woman, a very loving and giving mother.'
Raised near Abbey Road Studios, in affluent St John's Wood, North London, Damian was sent, aged eight, to board at the £23,000-a-year Ashdown House prep school in  Sussex, the alma mater of Boris Johnson and David Linley.
It was while there that he developed his love of acting, singing the lead in the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas the school would put on every summer.
Unsurprisingly, perhaps, given his breeding and good looks, he has never been short of female attention. One Old Etonian school friend told me this week how Damian was ribbed mercilessly after inadvertently becoming a 'Deb's Delight'.
'Somehow his address got passed around, and the next thing Damian's parents' house was being inundated with these invitations for debutante balls. There were an awful lot of nice girls from the shires who wanted him at their parties,' his friend revealed.
After back-packing around Africa for a year, he won a place at the Guildhall School Of Music And Drama where others in his year included Jude Law and Ewan McGregor.
By the time he was appearing regularly on TV, first in the BBC drama series Hearts And Bones, and later as a U.S. Army major in the highly-acclaimed £80 million Hollywood mini-series Band Of Brothers, in 2001, Damian was already boasting his own adoring female fan club, christened 'Damian Bunnies'.

Actor Damian Lewis, left, winner of the Emmy for outstanding lead actor in a drama series for Homeland and actress Claire Danes

'Women are completely drawn to him,' says one long-time female friend, more than a touch giddily.
'He has a devastating effect on them. It is partly to do with his blue eyes and that hair, but also because his background and schooling have made him supremely confident with women. He loves flirting, but since he's been married, he only has eyes for Helen.'
However, friends from his bachelor days remember Damian renting a rather lavish pad in the Hollywood Hills in which to woo women, immediately after his success in Band Of Brothers — a role for which he was personally chosen by the show's producers, Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg.
'It was a great place with a pool and views of LA and some pretty wild times were had there,' one told me this week. 'Damian had no shortage of female attention.'
On one return trip to the house in North London he shared at the time with his younger brother, writer/director Gareth, he discovered he had been sent no fewer than 40 individual pairs of knickers by adoring girl fans.
Damian's rather louche lifestyle came in the wake of his separation from blonde Channel 4 news reporter Katie Razzall, daughter of the thrice-married, high-living Lib Dem peer Lord Razzall, known in Westminster as 'Lord Razzall of Dazzle'.

'Women are completely drawn to him. He has a devastating effect on them. It is partly to do with his blue eyes and that hair, but also because his background and schooling have made him supremely confident with women.'

A female friend

She and Damian had a three-year romance before splitting in 2002 because of their long periods apart through work. She went on to marry one of his closest friends, fellow Old Etonian actor Oliver Milburn, with Damian attending the wedding.
Later, he was briefly linked to a string of eligible women, including It Girl Tamara Beckwith, TV producer Georgina Hurford-Jones, Sex  And The City actress Kristin Davis and U.S. starlet Alexa Davalos.
It was not until he began dating acclaimed Shakespearean actress  Ms McCrory that he toned down his wild partying ways. They met when they played illicit lovers in Five Gold Rings at London's  Almeida Theatre in 2003. Three years older than him, she was the daughter of a diplomat and had spent much of her childhood abroad.
Later, London-born Helen — best known for playing Cherie Blair in the hit 2006 movie, The Queen, and an MP in the latest Bond film Skyfall — was sent by her family to boarding school in Hertfordshire.
Like her husband-to-be, the petite brunette was known for being a magnet for the opposite sex and had a three-and-a-half-year affair with actor Rufus Sewell, followed by a brief relationship with Manchester-born actor James Murray.
Helen and Damian moved in together and had daughter Manon in 2006. By the time they finally got married in front of friends and family at Kensington and Chelsea Register Office in July 2007, she was already pregnant with Gulliver.
They now live in a large, five- bedroom house once owned by actor Hugh Laurie, and have a live-in nanny.
For all that they present a  genuinely blissful image — albeit long-distance — of matrimonial contentment, they both confess to private hiccups. She admits to being 'blunt' and recently, when he was discussing their suitability to appear together on stage in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, he likened their relationship to that of the play's sparring lovers Beatrice and Benedick, quipping: 'It's how she talks to me anyway, rudely and dismissively.'
Certainly, it can't be easy for an actress of McCrory's talent to find herself having to watch from the sidelines as his Hollywood career has snowballed.
One of their circle told me this week: 'At the end of the day, Helen is virtually unknown in America and being there as Damian's arm candy at the likes of the Golden Globes is not really her thing.
'She is a very strong character, super-intelligent and directors love her. Away from work, she is not the type to suffer fools and goes on about women's rights quite a lot. She can be a bit prickly. Put it this way, I don't think Damian would ever risk upsetting her.'
And despite the lure of Hollywood, it seems that the suddenly red-hot Damian wants nothing more than to be with the wife and children he rarely sees.