British actor Damian Lewis, whom we remember from “Homeland,” “Band of Brothers” and “Billions,” reigns again as the imperious King Henry VIII in the second series of “Wolf Hall” arriving Sunday on PBS.

Lewis proves vibrant as the young Henry who has just rid himself of his second wife by beheading her and has his wandering eye on the next.

While viewers know him as an award-winning actor for his television performances, it was a Shakespeare comedy that earned him his first prize at the tender age of 12.

“I was given the acting prize for my Bottom from ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ and we used to do Gilbert and Sullivan musicals every year,” he recalls.

“I’d been in five different Gilbert and Sullivan musicals by the age of 13, including ‘Pirates of Penzance.’ I continued acting in school without it becoming my life – I was also very active in other things, sports, too.”

He attended two boarding schools from the age of 8 to 18. “I went through a classical education, you would call it,” he shrugs, “based on an ancient classical Greek model where the physical, the spiritual and the intellectual were all brought together which – as the ancient Greeks believed — were equally important.”

But at 16, he and a group of friends shrugged off that rigid Greek model and presented their own play, scrounging rent money for the venue, costumes and props.“The school encouraged you to set up your own little business,” he remembers.

"So, at that age, it meant mostly going to uncles and aunts saying, ‘Can you bum me a 50?’ I was happier than I ever had been and more fulfilled when I was doing that. That’s when I realized, ‘I’m not going to sweat myself silly trying to get into Oxford or Cambridge.’ I was a daydreamer at that point. I was much more interested theater and playing sports.”

His family tolerated his daydreaming. “My parents could see I’d stopped working at the age of 16. I was sort of coasting along. I was more interested in playing the guitar and putting on plays. My mom just said, ‘There’s absolutely no point in going to university, getting a crappy degree, chasing girls, and doing theater – coming out and saying, “What now?” if you want to try a theater school.’”

He did want to try out for drama school. “I got into a couple of the theater schools and just decided I’m going to DO it. I'm going to skip university and get on with it.

“They said the first week we got there, ‘Don’t think of this as your first week of being a student actor, think of this as your first week of being a professional actor because this where it starts. We are training you now to get into the profession ... you're here because you really care about it. You really want to be here, and we believe you can go all the way.’”

So much for assurances. After two years of toiling with the Royal Shakespeare Company, Lewis began to doubt his decision to devote his life to theater.

“I started to see there was this whole other industry out there with infinite possibilities and started becoming intrigued by being on set,” he says.

“The cameras and the mechanics of the industry, the industrial nature of putting a film together with the machinery and lights, and it’s very mechanized, and I thought that was fascinating and really desperately wanted to get into some good TV shows.”

He auditioned for three different TV projects and was rejected for all three.

“And I thought, ‘Maybe I’m just going to be one of these Ian McKellen types, Antony Sher types.’ I thought, ‘Maybe I’m a bit too big and beefy for the camera, and maybe it’ll just take me 20 to 30 years of working in theater and getting a reputation before I finally do some camera work.’ Then suddenly I got a job in this thing called ‘Warriors’ and it won the BAFTA, and I sent flowers to my agent. I was so happy. I’d thought maybe it’s the theater for me, (TV) was another world. And look where we are now. “

It was really his performance as the American Maj. Richard Winters in “Band of Brothers” that captured Hollywood’s attention. “I think it was expected of me to be in L.A. and make movies,” he recalls.

“I made one movie called ‘Dreamcatcher’ and it did not go well particularly, and I think I was a bit scared off by the experience, and I just wanted to make sure I was going to follow good writing – whatever it was in — whether it was film, TV or theater, and try and focus on that. So I’ve been doing that, and hopefully proving to others, but most importantly proving to myself that I am an actor first and foremost and that I can be asked to turn my hand toward a variety of different things because of my craft.”

Leguizamo plays Facebook friend

John Leguizamo stars as the stranger who fills a woman’s need for a father in the film “Bob Trevino Likes It,” opening in theaters Friday. Based on a true story, the movie is about a girl who tries to “friend” a man she believes to be her father on Facebook. But instead of finding a Robert Trevino, she finds Bob Trevino who becomes a treasured pal.

Leguizamo tells me that his upbringing was not what you would call placid. “We had a crazy household,” he says. “My mother's rather kooky, my dad – the only way to keep him from being angry was to always make him laugh. So it was mandatory to be funny. I have one full brother I grew up with, and step- and half-brothers and sisters. I was a schizophrenic kid, sort of like a Jekyll and Hyde,” he says.

“There was part of me that was really studious and nerdy and part of me, I was a crazy little gangster — never did the two ever blend in till late in life. I was too cool to be with the nerdy kids, but too nerdy to be with the cool kids. So I never really fit in anywhere. But I was always trying to be with both.”

Pierce Brosnan joins the mob

Pierce Brosnan commands the role of the mob patriarch in the Paramount+ series “MobLand,” premiering March 30. Helen Mirren portrays his other half, and Tom Hardy plays the ultimate “fixer” for the gangland family.

Brosnan, who grew up in Ireland, was influenced as a kid by an odd assortment of entertainment. “I ask myself why I like acting because I'm a fairly shy man, and I was even a shyer younger man. I suppose ‘reserved’ would be a better way of looking at it. But I’ve learned to — as they say in the old country — act the goat, get out of myself. When I discovered acting, I knew I was on a good path,” he says.

“It was my passport to a new life and a way of expressing all the normal hurly-burly toil and struggle of the young man who was an Irish immigrant back in 1964. And I loved the movies. And I wanted to be a movie star. Innocently. I never dreamt that it was going to come to pass. I was just a fan in the town of Navan County Meath where I grew up on the banks of the River Boyne. There were two cinemas in the town, The Lyric and The Palace, and I would go there and watch, ironically, westerns – cowboys and Indians.”

Tilda Swinton ready for her closeup

It’s not like the old days when movies featuring two female stars were like a night with the WWE. Nowadays female actors are much more amenable to direction and cooperation. So director Pedro Almodovar probably didn’t encounter any hysterics when he orchestrated Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton through “The Room Next Door,” which arrives on DVD Tuesday.

Swinton explains one of the reasons she likes working with the camera. “It’s very quiet there,” says Swinton. “When the camera is rolling and the director says ‘action’ it’s a very quiet place to be, and there’s a sort of energy you can work with that I feel kind of wicked with,” she says.

“I still don’t want to be an actress, God forbid,” she shrugs. “That quietness I feel in front of the camera gives me the opportunity to go into my shyness. What I feel when I say I'm not an actress is that I never feel like an interpreter. I never feel like I'm interpreting other people’s work. I feel I work with them on their agenda, but I feel I'm always following my own. ... I'm too curious. I think it’s because I'm curious about things and am in it because I'm like a scientist. I like working things out like forensic business. ...

“I like thinking and find I can think very clearly in front of the camera, so there’s no question of me being transported in any way; if anything I’m clearer than ever.

“I'm genuinely lazy and I'm kind of dedicated to sacred idleness in some way and have a very, very low boredom threshold and I cannot be involved with something if I'm bored, I just can’t. And so the project I choose has to be a project that keeps me thinking and keeps my curiosity alive.”

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