McCrory nearly missed OBE over letter confusion
ACTRESS Helen McCrory has said she almost did not receive her OBE because she mistook the letter for an unpaid bill for her husband, Damian Lewis.
The Peaky Blinders star, whose parents were both Cardiff doctors, collected the honour for services to drama from the Queen at Buckingham Palace, but admitted she nearly missed the acceptance deadline.
She said: “They thought I hadn’t got the letter and I was actually phoned at home to be asked if I was going to be accepting the honour. I hadn’t opened it, I thought it was something else.
“I thought it was for my husband and thought ‘Oh God, he hasn’t paid something again’.
“It was sitting in his office, and they said ‘It’s your last day to accept it, would you like to accept it?’ I said ‘My gosh, of course, how fantastic’.
McCrory, who was joined at the palace by Lewis, best known for his roles in Homeland and Wolf Hall, said she was particularly thrilled to receive her gong from the Queen, adding: “I am so excited, I am so elated.
“I said ‘Thank you very much for coming, Your Majesty, because it means the world to all of us’ and she said ‘What service is it?’ and I said ‘For shouting in the dark, Your Majesty’ and she said ‘Quite right’.”
Meanwhile, actress Julie Walters has said winning Baftas and being nominated for Oscars could not compare to the honour of being made a dame.
The Billy Elliot star, 67, said: “It’s fantastic, it’s not really real. It was slightly nerve-wracking, ‘when do I curtsey?’ But everyone is the same. It’s one of those things where you feel relieved (when you’ve done it), then you look back and think ‘how fabulous.’
“I thought ‘I wish my parents were here’.
“It was so numbing. The Queen said ‘It’s so marvellous that you’ve got this, I’m so pleased’ and ‘How long have you been doing acting?’
“I said ‘43 years’ and she said ‘In so many different things, well done.”’
Dame Julie added she had been given special dispensation for a day off from shooting the Mamma Mia! sequel, which also stars Meryl Streep, Colin Firth, Cher and Amanda Seyfried, to go to the palace.
“They (the cast) all love it,” she said. “They were all joking about it, as you can imagine, there is lots of this (curtseying) going on.”