Bio
Helen McCrory is an English actress best known for portraying Cherie Blair in both the 2006 film The Queen and the 2010 film The Special Relationship; and for her role as Narcissa Malfoy in the final three Harry Potter films.
McCrory trained at the Drama Centre, London. She began her career on stage in the UK. She won the Manchester Evening News' Best Actress Award for her performance in the National Theatre's Blood Wedding and the Ian Charleson award for classical acting for playing Rose Trelawney in Trelawney of the Wells.
Helen's theatre work has continued to win her critical praise and a large fan base through such work as the Royal Shakespeare Company's Les Enfant du Paradis opposite Joseph Fiennes, Rupert Graves and James Purefoy.
At the Almeida Theatre, her productions have included The Triumph of Love opposite Chiwetel Ejiofor and the radical verse production, Five Gold Rings, opposite Damian Lewis.
Helen has also worked extensively at the Donmar Warehouse playing lead roles in How I Learnt to Drive, Old Times directed by Roger Michel, and in Sam Mendes' farewell double bill of Twelfth Night and Uncle Vanya (a triumph in both London and New York).
For her performance in Twelfth Night, Helen was nominated for the Evening Standard Best Actress Award, and the New York Drama Desk Awards.
Helen also found time to found the production company The Public with Michael Sheen, producing new work at the Liverpool Everyman, The Ambassadors and the Donmar (in which she also starred).
On the small screen, Helen's first television film, Karl Francis' Streetlife (1995) with Rhys Ifans, won her the Welsh BAFTA, Monte Carlo Best Actress Award and the Royal Television Society's Best Actress Award, for her extraordinary performance as Jo.
She went on to win Critics Circle Best Actress Award for her role as the barrister Rose Fitzgerald in the Channel 4 series North Square (2000), having been previously nominated for her performance in The Fragile Heart (1996).
Helen has shown her diversity as an actress, appearing in comedies such as Lucky Jim (2003) with Stephen Tompkinson or Dead Gorgeous (2002) with Fay Ripley, as well as dramas such as Joe Wright's The Last King (2003) (for which she was nominated for the LA Television Awards) and Anna Karenina (2000).
In 2014 she had a recurring role in the television horror series Penny Dreadful.
On 4 July 2007, McCrory married actor Damian Lewis. They have a daughter, Manon (b. 8 September 2006), and a son, Gulliver (b. 2 November 2007).