Homeland's Damian Lewis photographed wife Helen McCrory in White House toilets

British actors Damian Lewis and Helen McCrory at the TV Baftas (Getty Images)

Homeland star Damian Lewis took a picture of his wife in the White House toilet when the couple were invited for a state dinner with Barack Obama, she said.

Lewis, 42, and Helen McCrory, 45, both television actors, rubbed shoulders with Prime Minister David Cameron, Chancellor George Osborne, Hollywood star George Clooney and the US president at the banquet in March last year.

Peaky Blinders actress McCrory said of being at the event with her husband: "We took snaps of each other in every room, including the loo. Thrilling!

"Then we walked into this marquee, chatting away ... we suddenly looked at the rectangle stage. Warren Buffett, Helen McCrory, Damian Lewis, the president of the United States, George Clooney and an admiral," she said of the seating plan.

"We didn't even say anything, we just looked at each other. I could just hear my heart going de-DOOM!," she told the Radio Times.

McCrory also admitted she has not seen all of Homeland, the series which has made her husband a huge star in the US thanks to his leading role as former prisoner of war Brody.

She said: "I've never, ever been competitive. I always thought it was odd when people were. I thought, 'Why should someone else's life in any way possibly affect how well you're doing in yours?' So I've never compared myself to anyone, least of all my husband.

"I'm very, really, very proud of his success. I've seen ... well, I haven't seen all of Homeland."

She said: "Well, he hasn't seen half of my stuff ... we've got a five-year-old and a six-year-old."

The Hugo star ridiculed actresses who are overly concerned with their appearance, saying: "There's always a bit of you that's going, 'Oh God, not that (camera) angle'. But you just can't let it hold you back.

"I've worked with actresses where you can't talk to them because they're pouting all the way through the shot. And you're thinking, 'What are you doing, why are you talking like that?'. And then you think, 'Oh, you're pouting! I'm so sorry.'

"And then you think, 'I don't want to see that. I don't want to watch those dramas'.

"People want to see people that are flawed, who have their little successes and their little failures, as we all do in life.

"Every time I watch a woman wake up, flick her hair on the pillow, sit up and yawn gorgeously, it doesn't make me think, 'Life is beautiful'. It makes me think, 'I'm so far away from what a woman should look like'.

"Do I want to watch something that makes me feel lonely and depressed? Or do I actually want to look at the face of, I don't know, Javier Bardem? He, to me, is beautiful, but he's also real. He's also got lines, and you can smell him. That's what I'm attracted to."

McCrory said that she was being offered more romantic leads in her 40s than she was in her 20s.

"I've seen two scripts this week, both were the sexual parts in something," she told the magazine. "I've no idea why. But it's great because it's what happens, isn't it?

"Drama never used to reflect it. Suddenly, writers have woken up and thought, 'I'm 42 and I'm not looking at my wife, thinking, urgh'."

McCrory said of the advantages of being married to another actor: "When I go on to a set, or when I start rehearsing something, part of what I enjoy is the immersive process. You do leave reality behind a bit and become preoccupied with this world, and I don't ever need to explain that to Damian.

"Nor do I have to feel jealous when he has that time, because I know it's nothing threatening to the family. It is absolutely essential to who he is that he does it."

PA