McCrory was born on 17 August 1968 in Paddington, London.[1][2] Her mother, Ann (née Morgans), is a Welshphysiotherapist,[3] and her father, Iain McCrory (born 29 March 1940), is a diplomat from Glasgow; they were married in 1968.[4] She was the eldest of three children.[5]
McCrory starred in The Last of the Haussmans alongside Julie Walters and Rory Kinnear at the Royal National Theatre, which began 12 June 2012. The production was broadcast to cinemas around the world on 11 October 2012 through the National Theatre Live programme.[14] In the same year, she also appeared in the twenty-third James Bond film Skyfall as Clair Dowar MP. McCrory also played lead role, wedding director Julie Ranmore, in the three-part ITV drama Leaving. In 2013, McCrory narrated poetry for The Love Book App, an interactive anthology of love literature developed by Allie Byrne Esiri.[15] Again in 2013, she played Lady Macbeth in Macbeth at the Little Angel Theatre. The same year, she began playing Polly Gray in Peaky Blinders, which she continued to star in alongside Cillian Murphy for 5 series until 2019.[8] In 2020, she was set to star in the final series of Peaky Blinders until production was shut down five days before filming was set to begin in March due to the COVID-19 pandemic. When production resumed in January 2021, she was unable to return due to breast cancer and the script had to be rewritten following her death. She appears in series 6 through archive and unreleased footage.[16]
In 2014, McCrory played the title role in the National Theatre's production of Medea, directed by Carrie Cracknell. Her performance was critically acclaimed.[17] Also in 2014, she made a guest appearance on the TV series Penny Dreadful. She returned as a regular for the show's second season, playing the main antagonist.[7][8] In 2014, McCrory also starred in A Little Chaos, opposite Kate Winslet and Alan Rickman who also directed the film.[18] In 2016, she starred as Hester in the stage play The Deep Blue Sea, which was filmed and shown live in cinemas worldwide on 1 September 2016 as part of National Theatre Live.[19] McCrory was confirmed to play the lead role, human-rights lawyer Emma Banville, in six-part ITV drama series Fearless, which aired in June 2017.[20]
In 2019, McCrory starred as Kathryn Villiers in Tom Rob Smith’s MotherFatherSon alongside Richard Gere and Billy Howle.[21] It averaged 2.69 million viewers.[22] In 2020, she played Sonia Woodley QC in the ITV drama Quiz, which received a large audience while it was on the air during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns with the first episode seen live by an average of 5.3 million viewers in the UK.[23] In June 2020, McCrory was featured in an episode of the BBC Radio 4's programme Desert Island Discs;[24] Donna Ferguson from The Guardian called the episode one of five key shows in the programme's 80 year history.[25] In her final television performance, she starred as Prime Minister Dawn Ellison in the BBC four-part drama Roadkill, which aired in October 2020.[8] Her final performance was in the animated biographical film Charlotte, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2021 and was released in 2022.[26]
McCrory served as an honorary patron of the London children's charity Scene & Heard.[30] She also served as patron for the charity Sir Hubert von Herkomer (HVH) Arts Foundation, dedicated to offering youth a gateway to the arts, which her husband Damian Lewis took over as patron in 2021 following her death.[31] During the COVID-19 pandemic, she and Lewis supported Feed NHS, a programme to give food from high-street restaurants to NHS staff, and had raised £1 million for the charity by early April 2020.[32] In 2022, Lewis received a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) partially for their charity work with the NHS, which he shared with McCrory by posting to Twitter with the hashtag #CBESharingItWithHelen and telling the PA news agency "She and I are both thrilled".[33] McCrory was also an ambassador with the charity The Prince's Trust, which she spoke about on Good Morning Britain in her final public appearance in March 2021.[34]
McCrory died of breast cancer at her home in London on 16 April 2021, aged 52.[37][38][39] Announcing the death on Twitter, husband Damian Lewis stated that she had died "peacefully at home, surrounded by a wave of love from friends and family."[40][41] She had kept her diagnosis private while receiving treatment and continuing to work. "Very, very few people" knew of her illness before her death as she did not want her illness to overshadow her professional and charitable work.[42]
She was filming for series 6 of Peaky Blinders at the time of her death. In her absence, the storyline had to be altered and certain parts were reshot.[16] In addition to Peaky Blinders, her last appearances include the 2016 stage production of The Deep Blue Sea at the National Theatre, an episode of the show Have I Got News For You in 2019, two series of the drama His Dark Materials, the 2020 ITV drama Quiz, the BBC drama Roadkill, and the animated film Charlotte.[42]
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