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Helen McCrory

Helen Elizabeth McCrory (17 August 1968 – 16 April 2021) was an English actress. After studying at the Drama Centre London, she made her stage debut in The Importance of Being Earnest in 1990. Other stage roles include playing Lady Macbeth in Macbeth at Shakespeare's Globe, Olivia in Twelfth Night, Rosalind in As You Like It in the West End, and Medea in the eponymous play in the Royal National Theatre.

McCrory is known for her film roles as Françoise in Charlotte Gray (2001), Cherie Blair in both The Queen (2006) and The Special Relationship (2010), alongside Michael Sheen who portrayed husband and Prime Minister Tony Blair in both, Narcissa Malfoy in the final three Harry Potter films (2009, 2010, 2011), Mama Jeanne in Hugo (2011), and Clair Dowar in the James Bond film Skyfall (2012). She was also known for her television roles as Polly Gray in the BBC series Peaky Blinders (2013–2021), Madame Kali in the Showtime series Penny Dreadful (2014-15), Emma Banville in the ITV series Fearless (2017) and Kathryn Villiers in the BBC mini-series MotherFatherSon (2019).

Early life

McCrory was born on 17 August 1968 in Paddington, London. Her mother, Ann (née Morgans), is a Welsh physiotherapist, and her father, Iain McCrory (born 29 March 1940), is a diplomat from Glasgow; they were married in 1968. She was the eldest of three children.

McCrory was educated at Queenswood School near Hatfield, Hertfordshire, then spent a year living in Italy. Upon her return to Britain, she began studying acting at the Drama Centre in London.

Career

McCrory won third prize at the Ian Charleson Awards for her 1993 performance as Rose Trelawny in Trelawny of the 'Wells' at the National Theatre. In 2002, she was nominated for a London Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Actress (for playing Elena in Chekhov's Uncle Vanya at the Donmar Warehouse). She was later nominated for a 2006 Laurence Olivier Theatre Award for her role as Rosalind in As You Like It in the West End. In April 2008, McCrory made a "compelling" Rebecca West in a production of Ibsen's Rosmersholm at the Almeida Theatre, London. She appeared in Charles II: The Power and The Passion (2003), as Barbara Villiers, Countess of Castlemaine and in supporting roles in such films as Interview with the Vampire (1994), Charlotte Gray (2001), The Count of Monte Cristo (2002) and Casanova (2005). In the critically acclaimed film The Queen (2006), she played Cherie Blair, a role she reprised in Peter Morgan's follow-up The Special Relationship (2010).

She appeared in a modernised television adaptation of Frankenstein (2007). In 2006, her first pregnancy forced her to pull out of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007), in which she had been cast as Bellatrix Lestrange (she was replaced by Helena Bonham Carter). McCrory was later cast as Bellatrix's sister Narcissa Malfoy in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, released in July 2009. In 2010 and 2011, she reprised her role in the final films, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2. She also played the principal villain role of Rosanna Calvierri in the 2010 episode "The Vampires of Venice" of the BBC television series Doctor Who.

McCrory starred in The Last of the Haussmans alongside Julie Walters and Rory Kinnear at the Royal National Theatre, which began 12 June 2012. The production was broadcast to cinemas around the world on 11 October 2012 through the National Theatre Live programme. In the same year, she also appeared in the twenty-third James Bond film Skyfall as Clair Dowar MP. McCrory also played lead role, wedding director Julie Ranmore, in the three-part ITV drama Leaving. In 2013, McCrory narrated poetry for The Love Book App, an interactive anthology of love literature developed by Allie Byrne Esiri. Again in 2013, she played Lady Macbeth in Macbeth at the Little Angel Theatre. The same year, she began playing Polly Gray in Peaky Blinders, which she continued to star in alongside Cillian Murphy for 5 series until 2019. In 2020, she was set to star in the final series of Peaky Blinders until production was shut down five days before filming was set to begin in March due to the COVID-19 pandemic. When production resumed in January 2021, she was unable to return due to breast cancer and the script had to be rewritten following her death. She appears in series 6 through archive and unreleased footage.

In 2014, McCrory played the title role in the National Theatre's production of Medea, directed by Carrie Cracknell. Her performance was critically acclaimed. Also in 2014, she made a guest appearance on the TV series Penny Dreadful. She returned as a regular for the show's second season, playing the main antagonist. In 2014, McCrory also starred in A Little Chaos, opposite Kate Winslet and Alan Rickman who also directed the film. In 2016, she starred as Hester in the stage play The Deep Blue Sea, which was filmed and shown live in cinemas worldwide on 1 September 2016 as part of National Theatre Live. McCrory was confirmed to play the lead role, human-rights lawyer Emma Banville, in six-part ITV drama series Fearless, which aired in June 2017.

In 2019, McCrory starred as Kathryn Villiers in Tom Rob Smith’s MotherFatherSon alongside Richard Gere and Billy Howle. It averaged 2.69 million viewers. In 2020, she played Sonia Woodley QC in the ITV drama Quiz, which received a large audience while it was on the air during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns with the first episode seen live by an average of 5.3 million viewers in the UK. In June 2020, McCrory was featured in an episode of the BBC Radio 4's programme Desert Island Discs; Donna Ferguson from The Guardian called the episode one of five key shows in the programme's 80 year history. In her final television performance, she starred as Prime Minister Dawn Ellison in the BBC four-part drama Roadkill, which aired in October 2020. Her final performance was in the animated biographical film Charlotte, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2021 and was released in 2022.

Personal life

On 4 July 2007, McCrory married actor Damian Lewis; the couple had a daughter, Manon (born 2006), and a son, Gulliver (born 2007). Their main home was in Tufnell Park, North London, and they had another near Sudbury in Suffolk.

Philanthropy

McCrory served as an honorary patron of the London children's charity Scene & Heard. She also served as patron for the charity Sir Hubert von Herkomer (HVH) Arts Foundation, dedicated to offering youth a gateway to the arts, which her husband Damian Lewis took over as patron in 2021 following her death. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she and Lewis supported Feed NHS, a programme to give food from high-street restaurants to NHS staff, and had raised £1 million for the charity by early April 2020. In 2022, Lewis received a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) partially for their charity work with the NHS, which he shared with McCrory by posting to Twitter with the hashtag #CBESharingItWithHelen and telling the PA news agency "She and I are both thrilled". McCrory was also an ambassador with the charity The Prince's Trust, which she spoke about on Good Morning Britain in her final public appearance in March 2021.

Honours

In 2016, McCrory received an honorary doctorate from the University of York. In 2017, she was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to drama.

Death

McCrory died of breast cancer at her home in London on 16 April 2021, aged 52. Announcing the death on Twitter, husband Damian Lewis stated that she had died "peacefully at home, surrounded by a wave of love from friends and family." She had kept her diagnosis private while receiving treatment and continuing to work. "Very, very few people" knew of her illness before her death as she did not want her illness to overshadow her professional and charitable work.

She was filming for season 6 of Peaky Blinders at the time of her death. In her absence, the storyline had to be altered and certain parts were reshot. In addition to Peaky Blinders, her last appearances include the 2016 stage production of The Deep Blue Sea at the National Theatre, an episode of the show Have I Got News For You in 2019, two seasons of the drama His Dark Materials, the 2020 ITV drama Quiz, the BBC drama Roadkill, and the animated film Charlotte.