Two days after announcing her death after a ‘heroic battle against cancer’, actor Damian Lewis wrote a tribute to his late wife, award-winning actress Helen McCrory, for the UK Sunday Times. The 52-year-old Harry Potter and Peaky Blinders star was 52.
“In a weekend in which the newspapers will rightly pay their respects to the Duke of Edinburgh, thousands of others around the world remembered that m’Duchess, my Little One, are royals in their own right,” the Homeland and Billions star (50) wrote of his wife. The couple married in 2007 and shared two children, daughter Manon and son Gulliver.
Although Lewis acknowledges McCrory’s formidable acting – praised by peers, including Helen Mirren, Peaky Blinders co-star Cillian Murphy and a number Harry Potter stars with whom she played Narcissa Malfoy – and her own love of the profession, he chose to dedicate his tribute to ‘Helen the person’.
“Helen was an even more brilliant person if she were an actress,” the Emmy winner wrote. “She must have been a human being.” I’m much more interested in who I am, than where I am ‘, she would say and naturally wanted to share. But she also lives by the principle of kindness and generosity. That you put these things in the world to make it better, to make people feel better.
“I have never known anyone who so consciously spread happiness. To say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and ‘you are so kind’ just like her. Even if she dies in her last few days, if we are with us wonderful chatting caregivers, she repeatedly said, “thank you very much ‘in her semi-deceptive state.”
He continued: ‘She always asked people how it was, always interested and made every person she met feel special, as if they were the only person in the room. Gave them full attention. Always make them laugh. There were few funny people – she was funny as hell. ‘
According to Lewis, car drivers, service personnel and the nurses who care for her during her cancer treatment received special attention from his wife.
“Helen would say, ‘Well, their job is a lot harder than mine,'” he recalled saying of nurses. “And she was dying.”
He described McCrory as someone who believes he chooses happiness – “I have never known anyone who could enjoy life so much,” he shared. Lewis wrote that she remains stoic in the face of an illness she has kept out of the public eye.
“She left our beautiful children, Manon and Gully, too early, but they are prepared for life,” the British star wrote. “They have the fearlessness, wit, curiosity, talent and beauty of their mother. She encouraged us to be courageous and not to be afraid. As she repeatedly said to the children: ‘Do not be sad, because even though I “I want to take the sniff here, I lived the life I wanted.”
“She was absolutely heroic in her illness. Funny, of course – generous, brave, failing, who constantly reminds us how happy we were, how blessed we are. Her generosity encouraged the three of us to live. Live fully, take opportunities Only a few weeks ago she said to us from her bed, ‘I want Daddy to have girlfriends, lots of them, you all have to love again, love is not possessive, but you know, Damian ‘at least try to get the funeral without abandoning anyone.’
“I miss her already. She has shone brighter in recent months than you would think even the brightest star could shine. In life we also had to get up to meet her. But her greatest and most beautiful act of bravery and generosity was to ‘normalize’ her death. She showed no fear, no bitterness, no self-pity, but only the courage to go on and insisted that no one should be sad because she is happy. a meteor in our lives. ‘
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