Damian Lewis has revealed he feels a “moral responsibility” playing real people on screen.
The 55-year-old English actor portrays British Army General – and later Field Marshal – Sir Bernard “Monty” Montgomery in the film Pressure.
Lewis first rose to fame playing US army Major Richard Winters in Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks’ Second World War miniseries Band of Brothers in 2001.
Other real-life roles
He later went on to play other real-life figures such as Henry VIII in Wolf Hall and US actor Steve McQueen in Once Upon A Time in Hollywood.
Director Anthony Maras’ wartime drama Pressure also stars Andrew Scott as meteorologist James Stagg and Brendan Fraser as Allied military commander and future US president Dwight D Eisenhower as they plan the D-Day landings during the Second World War in June 1944.
Speaking to the Press Association at the London premiere of the film, Lewis spoke about feeling a “moral responsibility” to represent real people well.
Playing Monty
“I do enjoy playing real people. I enjoy the research, the history and finding people they knew and who knew them,” he said.
Speaking about his character, Lewis described Monty as a “very complex and Marmite character”.
“He wasn’t liked by the other Allied command, especially the Americans, who found him a bit of an upstart.”
“But he was the only one who had seen active service and his men adored him. He was cautious strategically because he valued human life, and I think the Americans found that frustrating sometimes.”
Pressure plot and release
The synopsis for Pressure teases: “In the tense 72 hours before D-Day, and the fate of the free world hanging in the balance.”
Pressure sees Eisenhower weighing up whether to launch the seaborne Allied invasion of Normandy or lose the element of surprise in the fight to defeat the Nazis – all on account of a weather forecast delivered by Stagg.
Speaking at the premiere, Fraser spoke about how hundreds of thousands of lives “hinged on a weather report”, showing that Stagg was an “unsung hero who stands his ground”.
The 57-year-old actor said he “pinched himself” working on the movie – which also stars Kerry Condon and Chris Messina.
He added: “It wasn’t lost on me that I also had an obligation in playing a role that is not based on, but it is the icon of Dwight Eisenhower, a figure who I must admit I did not know enough about when I first saw the material.
“I educated myself, and what I took away from what I learned from studying documents at Imperial War Museum in Southbank or listening to all the dad podcasts.
“There’s a responsibility that I felt I had to show who this guy was on a fateful weekend and the very real human decisions that he had to make, and he always listened to everyone. He was a gifted diplomat.”
Reflecting on the “high-stakes situation” these people faced, he said an incorrect decision could have seen the war “go on for months, if not years, and risk more and more deaths”.
“So it was a huge choice and a great decision by a humble man,” he added.
Pressure is released in UK cinemas on September 9.
