Damian Lewis on songwriting and 'oddly welcome' chaos

Actor Damian Lewis says chaos has been "oddly welcome" in his life in recent years, as he prepares to tour the UK to promote his second album.

The album, titled Sweet Chaos, is the follow up to his debut Mission Creep and produced by Guy Chambers.

TV and stage actor Lewis, known for his roles in Homeland, Band of Brothers and Wolf Hall, said that his life had been "quite chaotic" in the past six to eight years, but that he had found "sweetness in writing music and love and friendships".

"The chaos has been oddly welcome at times," he told BBC South East.

Lewis' wife Helen McCrory died of cancer in 2021, aged 52.

"Chaos can be just chaos and overwhelming, but sometimes if you get into the moment of chaos, it can be remarkably fertile and creative," he said.

"That's what I've found."

He said that he had always played music, including going busking in his 20s with a motorbike, tent and guitar, for about a month at a time.

"I've been acting much more publicly than I've been playing music," he added.

"But I hope people take the music at face value and just enjoy the music once they find it."

He said that he did not feel more vulnerable when performing music compared to acting.

"They're two very different things. When you're acting you need to go down a rabbit hole, a separate, alternative reality, a parallel world," he said.

"You need to sublimate yourself to the journey, to the script and the story. You're an interpreter."

But he said that writing and performing his own songs made him "author and also interpreter".

"It's a different kind of psychological journey that you take," he added.

"It's not immersive in the sense that you become something else."

Of his television career, Lewis said that he had been "very lucky" and "completely unwittingly" at the vanguard of a shift in TV, in shows which enjoyed global success.

"I've been very fortunate and I've loved doing all of them," he added.

His tour in the autumn includes performances in Edinburgh, Glasgow, London and Brighton, where he played a set on 10 June at record shop Resident.

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