Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Fearless Mccrory: i hate technology
HER character in ITV drama Fearless, human rights lawyer Emma Banville, is no fan of the intelligence services who want to stop her uncovering the truth.
And in real life, actress Helen Mccrory admits that she loathes the technology used to spy on us as we go about our everyday lives. “I’d quite happily smash them all up,” she admits cheerfully. “I hate it all, to be honest. I’m a Luddite. “What worries me is when I’m looking at an advert and then all of my emails suddenly seem to be related and then I’m getting photographs of wherever I’ve just written I’d like to go on holiday. That is absolutely scary. Privacy is to be guarded. And I don’t think any of us in the Western world have that any more.” Mum-of-two Helen, who is married to Homeland star Damian Lewis, even believes that modern technology is ruining our lives. “I don’t tweet. I don’t have Facebook. I don’t do Snapchat. Because I think these are really unhelpful to everybody. To believe that life is airbrushed and perfect. Of course they’re not. “I’m constantly telling my children they will have as much pain as they will have happiness in life and they should never try to avoid it. It’s as much a part of them. “This anaesthetising of our brains or ourselves is unhelpful.” She does, however, realise that MI6 or the CIA have valid reasons for wanting to listen in to people’s conversations. “In the old days, all the bad guys had to come and meet in a cafe – whereas now you don’t have to do that,” she sighs. “You can just do it all in secure networks online. And that makes the baddies much harder to catch.” Helen, 48, said she jumped at the chance of playing Emma when she got a call from Homeland writer Patrick Harbinson, saying he had penned the role especially for her. She read the script and loved it. But life for the Peaky Blinders star doesn’t always run so smoothly. Last year, she nearly missed getting her OBE. Luckily, she got a call asking if she was going to accept the honour or not, and realised she’d not opened the envelope. “I thought it was a parking ticket,” she says. ■ Fearless screens on ITV on Monday at 9pm.