Helen McCrory: ping pong diplomacy and Scorsese's henchman

It is nine-all on the outdoor table-tennis table in Regent's Park, London, a score arrived at somewhat chaotically due to the fallen autumn debris on the playing surface. The match began with Helen McCrory protesting a lack of interest in the score, but things have become more intense as the winning 11-point mark approaches, and the 43-year-old actor (soon to appear as a Parisian grande dame in Martin Scorsese's children's film, Hugo ) has put on glasses. She's stubbed out her cigarillo. As a shot missiles by she says, "Lucky bounce! The ball hit a twig!" Ten-nine ... understandably she's stopped paying our interview such careful attention. Earlier, a question about Hugo elicited a brilliant digression about life on a "family-like" Scorsese film set, always waiting for a henchman to approach the Italian-American director and say something like "Marty, it's been done ." Now we contest a rally while haltingly discussing her husband Damian Lewis's new hit US TV drama, Homeland ; and just as McCrory is describing flying out for the show's premiere, she pings a flier over the net. Ten-ten. A nail biter. Regent's Park is a favourite hang-out, she says. The daughter of a diplomat, McCrory's early years were itinerant but she's always been a Londoner, more or less – a student at Drama Centre London, then one of Sam Mendes's favourites when he was a director at the Donmar, later an Olivier award-nominee for her role in 2005's As You Like It at the Wyndham's Theatre. She met Lewis when they were in a play at the Almeida in Islington, north London; the pair now have two children. Islington factored again when McCrory appeared as notorious ex-resident Cherie Blair in The Queen . Last year she reprised the role in The Special Relationship . "More difficult the second time. By then Tony was out of power and Cherie was on Radio 4 all the time. Everyone knew what she sounded like. The first time she was mostly silent, a bird in a cage." It was a more profound film role, anyway, than her very first – as "Second Whore" in 1994's Interview with the Vampire. ("I know what you're thinking: who beat me to First?") The years since have brought more substantial work, and by 2009 McCrory was of sure enough standing to earn a berth in Harry Potter's mob-cast, appearing in the final instalments. Next? Mendes has called her up for his new James Bond film. She's under orders not to blab, but "I'm not Bond. It's nice: I'm not Bond in Bond and I'm not Hugo in Hugo . I've got a four- and five-year-old and I'm not away for months, making melodramatic decisions about whether to be a mother or an actress." No melodrama, either, as the final point plays out on the table. "Mullahed by a journo," says McCrory, shaking her head. "And on another lucky bounce."