Helen McCrory swore friends to secrecy as she battled cancer
TRAGIC Helen McCrory swore friends to secrecy as she ‘heroically’ battled cancer, one of them has revealed.
Theatre director Carrie Cracknell told yesterday how the actress wanted to keep quiet about her illness to avoid it overshadowing her work and the philanthropy which saw her raise over £1m for British National Health Service workers during the pandemic.
Ms Cracknell, 41, a close friend of Ms McCrory since they worked together on the stage production of Medea at Britain’s National Theatre in 2014, also told how the actress was planning to put on a show in New York, but it had to be cancelled because of her cancer.
She said: ‘Helen wanted to be very private about her illness and I understand why. When you live in the public spotlight, you have to find space to protect the things that are just for you. Very, very few people knew, and I only did because we were planning to transfer a show to Broadway and we had to cancel that because she was undergoing treatment. We were sworn to secrecy.
‘Her need to be fully alive and be committed and to take things incredibly seriously, such as her family and charity work, defined her last few years for her as much as ever.’ Ms Cracknell said the Peaky Blinders star, 52, wanted to focus on these aspects of her life rather than her illness. Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today show yesterday, she added: ‘Helen faced up to it with a level of bravery and humour that was completely extraordinary and was teaching people around her how to live. It was a very remarkable thing.’
Ms McCrory’s husband, Homeland actor Damian Lewis, 50, announced she had died on Friday. In a moving tribute, he said: ‘She died as she lived. Fearlessly. God we love her and know how lucky we are to have had her in our lives. She blazed so brightly.’
Ms McCrory, who played gangland matriarch Aunt Polly in BBC crime drama Peaky Blinders, revealed in a recent interview that she had been spending lockdown painting with her daughter Manon, 14, and listening to son Gully, 13, play music.
Speaking of her own challenges during the pandemic, she told BBC podcast The Coronavirus Newscast: ‘It sort of seems you think you’re absolutely fine. You’re pottering along, you’re coping with it – you know: cleaning, cooking, cleaning, cooking, cleaning, cooking – and you suddenly burst into tears. And it’s the fear and the vulnerability coming out, then you pick yourself up again and you go on as if nothing happened.’