How Damian Lewis made an enemy of Ian McKellen: “I am hugely embarrassed”

Posted On December 27, 2025December 27, 2025

It’s the season of forgiveness, so today let’s have a look at one of the many, many examples of when actors say things about other actors that they then look back on and think, “Hmm… that might have been better off as an inside thought.” Well, that’s exactly what happened to Band of Brothers and Homeland star Damian Lewis back in the day.

His particular slip of the tongue came back in 2013 when he got into a bit of a (very English and restrained) slanging match with legendary thesp Sir Ian McKellen after giving a soundbite about how he hoped his future career would pan out.

Asked why he wanted to progress from doing theatre work in his 20s, Lewis was quoted as saying he feared: “I would be one of these slightly over-the-top, fruity actors who would have an illustrious career on stage, but wouldn’t start getting any kind of film work until I was 50 and then start playing wizards.”

Well… that’s not that generic, is it, and quite predictably and understandably McKellan took some umbrage with it, especially after appearing in a sitcom for ITV called Vicious that got some shocking reviews, saying: “So he feels sorry for me, does he? Well, I’m very happy, he needn’t worry about me. To rebut it: I wouldn’t like to have been one of those actors who hit stardom quite early on and expected it to continue, and was stuck doing scripts that I didn’t particularly like just to keep the income up.”

Lewis then pedalled things right back and issued a statement, saying: “I am hugely embarrassed that comments of mine have been linked in a negative way to Sir Ian McKellen. I have always been, and continue to be, an enormous fan and admirer of Sir Ian’s. He’s one of the greats and one of the reasons I became an actor.”

So that was all dealt with, and that’s fine. As it’s Christmas, let’s focus on the positives, and a big positive comes in the shape of Lewis’ latest film, which is a more important one than you might imagine it to be at first glance.

Fackham Hall flew under the radar a bit when it was released this month, but it definitely represents a shift back to comedy, and by comedy, we mean proper, slapstick, clever gags and outright stupidity that was signposted by the remake of The Naked Gun earlier this year.

Co-written by Jimmy Carr and starring Lewis as the head of an aristocratic 1930s British household, it’s a Downton Abbey spoof that’s packed full of utterly stupid jokes, puerile double entendres and cartoon violence, all of which are things that we need much, much more of in movies.

It also has probably the most effective trailer seen in a long time, which reflects our dwindling attention spans by managing to put a proper laugh in within the first ten seconds as Lewis goes hunting with his posh friends to disastrous results.

Reviews of Fackham Hall have been pretty much what you might expect, slightly snooty broadsheet critics calling it childish while pretending they’d rather be watching a five-hour documentary about the war in Ukraine, while audiences in the main loved it. Although it’s not going to do massive numbers at the box office, it hopefully will stand up solidly once it hits streaming platforms, and let’s hope that it sparks a raft of equally stupid films.

Because God knows, there are enough completely depressing things going on in the world on a daily basis, and if we can be treated to more slices of cinema that essentially focus on the premise of inserting as many groan-worthy puns into each scene as possible, then 2026 may not be so bad.

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