Actress Helen McCrory has been doing the media interview rounds for Peaky Blinders return, season five. The highly popular and darkly violent television drama about Birmingham gypsy gangsters from the 1920s and 1930s features her as the matriarch Polly Sheldon. Her gravelly voice, sassy and menacing manner suit her for the role – and indeed reflect her own maverick attitude to life.
She was born 17 August 1968 with a diplomat father and travelled with her two siblings and parents on a peripatetic few years from Paris, Tanzania, Norway to Madagascar, finally ending up at boarding school. She graduated from Drama school and hasn’t stopped working since, walking straight into a job at the National Theatre followed by 10 years alternating between there and the Donmar and is a notoriously enthusiastic party-goer. In 2003 she acted with Damian Lewis (Brody in Homeland and Bobby Axelrod in Billions), had a coup de foudre and been married ever since with two children.
She has a Sun and Mars in entertaining, fiery Leo with her Sun in a creative square to Neptune and a sensible trine to Saturn in forced-to-be-self-reliant Aries. She’s got a charmingly indulgent Venus Jupiter in hard-working Virgo square a restless Gemini Moon. Most notably she has a tricky Yod of Neptune sextile Uranus Pluto inconjunct Saturn. That’s a tricky Yod to handle well since it requires maturity, self-discipline and control otherwise it turns self-defeating.
Her Solar Arc Mars has been rattling her Yod as it is conjunct her Uranus this year and tr Pluto will move to square her Saturn in a couple of years’ time. Both of which will shift her onto a new trajectory and not without some considerable effort.
Her relationship with Damian Lewis is a match of two opposing Suns with his Aquarius Sun across from her Leo Sun. But his (probably) Virgo Moon will conjunct her Venus which also chimes with his Capricorn Venus which works well as does his Jupiter opposition her Moon; with his Mars in a sparky, adventurous square to her Venus Jupiter. There are no birth times but I’d have expected slightly more of a merging of planets frankly.
Their relationship chart has a creative though evasive composite Sun Neptune; with an enduring though cool composite Venus sextile Saturn; a volatile and argumentative composite Mars Uranus; and (maybe) a reassuring composite Moon square Jupiter. It’s probably as well they spend a fair amount of time apart with conflicting career demands.