I Am Michael Sheen ...
He’s delivered astonishing portrayals of Brian Clough, Tony Blair and David Frost. But what’s really shaped Sheen?
Empire: What was your biggest influence while growing up?
Michael Sheen: I suppose my family generally were into performing, so in terms of an influence on me becoming an actor, then the first influence was my immediate family. My mum and dad were both into amateur operatics and that kind of stuff — doing musicals — and so had my dad’s mum and dad and my dad’s brother. So more on my dad’s side, I guess. So there was a sort of atmosphere in the family that you got on all right if you could do a little song or a dance at Christmastime or whatever. That was a big influence, just from sort of the general family atmosphere.
And in other ways I suppose, people who I’d never even met, such as my great-grandfather, who had a sense of the dramatic. He was supposedly a big waster in the town, a drinker and a gambler, and had a huge road-to-Damascus conversion where he was lying in the gutter and — this is the story — God spoke to him through the moon and told him to mend his ways and he became a street preacher. And God told him to save up money and buy the disused tin mine in the mountain, which he did, and everyone thought he was mad, and then he discovered a new vein of tin and he became very well-to-do. So having stories around like that in the family…
And then there’s like my great-great grandmother who was an elephant and lion-tamer for Barnum And Bailey Circus… There’s this whole thing in the family. The family ancestry is an influence in itself, even though I never met these people. And I suppose included in that in a way, in terms of people who have influenced my life and who had a direct influence on me who I’ve never met, I’d include Richard Burton as well, who came from the same town as me. And Anthony Hopkins, who I do now know, but I didn’t at the time — just having two actors who came from the same town as me, that had a big influence as well. Because it made me feel like I had something to aspire towards. So I’d put all those people in that area of sort of ancestry, whether bloodline or not, that were a big influence.
E: Is it true your dad was a Jack Nicholson impersonator?
M: Was and is! Yeah, Yeah. Although that was much later on — I wouldn’t really cite that as an influence, as convenient as that would be in terms of, you know, being other people. He didn’t really start doing that until I was about 19, 20 and I can’t say it was a huge influence on me.
E: Fair enough. There was a time when professional football might have been an option for you, wasn’t there?
M: Yeah. My mother’s brother, Phillip Thomas, played a lot of football when I was growing up, so when I was younger he was a real hero of mine, I thought he was really cool. He played football for the local team. And he would take me down there sometimes. Funnily enough, there’s two sorts of parallel stories here.
On the one hand I would go backstage, like when my uncle John and my auntie Marjorie were doing amateur operatics and when my mum and dad were taking me to go and see their shows in Newport, I’d get taken backstage, and we’d go into the dressing rooms and there’d be all these middle-aged men and women in these very over-the-top costumes and over-the-top make-up, and that had a very big effect on me just in terms of being a little kid wandering around these dressing rooms and seeing just this incredibly theatrical stuff going on, and that gave me, if nothing else, a sense of the grotesque!
And then on the other hand, I’d be taken by my uncle Phillip down to where his football team were playing and I’d have a kick-about with all these very grown-up men in the football team before the match and I’d sort of show off my skills and they’d all be very impressed with how much I could keep the ball up… Or at least they made it //seem// like they were impressed. Now, looking back on it they were doing what all grown-ups do to little kids, being very encouraging. But at the time they made me feel great.
So on the one hand being a little kid with the grown-ups doing acting, that left an impression. And then on the other hand I was a little kid being with the grownups playing football as well!
E: Was professional football ever really a serious career option?
M: Yeah, I guess so. When I was 12 I was asked if I wanted to join the Arsenal youth team and then consequently I had trials for various teams, so it was something I guess that I could have… If I had really wanted to go for it then, then I… But then for the next few years my interest in acting became much stronger.
The next big influence, then, was the man who ran my youth theatre, Godfrey Evans. He had a huge effect on me, really. He ran this youth theatre and he was the man who through this youth theatre introduced me to classic plays, and it was then I first started acting seriously. Shakespeare and Arthur Miller and Brecht and Chekov and all the sort of great writers, I got introduced to through the youth theatre, and he had a very strong sense of tradition and discipline and structure and he gave me my kind of work ethic I suppose; instilled in me a sense of seriousness about the work and thoroughness and discipline, and I got a lot of the sense of how I work through him and through that youth theatre.
In that youth theatre I remember the first man I ever saw in a dress. Which was Russell T. Davies. He was in my youth theatre as well. When I joined the youth theatre I was about 14 and Russell, I think, was about 21, 22, and he used to run the sort of Cabaret-y things when we did the residential courses, and he and a friend of his would always go and do it in drag. So that was quite a shaping experience!
E: Does he remember you from then?
M: Russell? Yeah I saw him the other night.
E: So you’ve been friends since then?
M: Oh yeah, yeah. I mean, he came back to the UK theatre and directed me as David Copperfield a few years later after he had left, and I've seen him over and over again over the years.
So the youth theatre experience and especially Godfrey Evans, who is director of the youth theatre, and director of a lot of the plays, that was a massive influence on me because then through that, through taking acting more seriously, I started reading Kenneth Tynan’s writings about theatre, which were a massive influence on me, and then I started watching Lawrence Olivier’s performances on film, because I’d read Tynan’s reviews of Olivier’s performances on stage, and that made me seek out the performances on film. That was a massive influence.
E: Is there one of Olivier’s performances above all others that you could cite?
M: I suppose… I mean, the first one I saw was Richard III. I saw a clip of that when I was very young and I had no idea who Olivier was, who Shakespeare was, who Richard III was, but it’s just been very… the colours of it were really garish. There was something about this character he was playing who looked a bit like the Childcatcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and he was just really disturbing and it really stayed with me. And then when I eventually watched it properly when I was about 14 I guess, that had a big effect on me.
E: You then went on to RADA. Are there any particular teachers there you would mention has having helped shape you?
M: All the tutors there had a big effect on me. I suppose if I had to single out one, there was a teacher called Ben Benison, who is probably most well known for being the guy from Vision On. Remember that show Vision On? Tony Hart was on it, and there was always someone on it doing sign-language for the deaf as well, and it was a kids’ show, and there was this very tall, lanky guy who used to chase around this little furry thing that used to go flying around the set. That was Ben Benison.
He was an extraordinary guy who’d worked in a group called Theatre Machine with a guy called Keith Johnson who was a big improvisation guy who wrote a book called Impro, or Improv, and it was a big creative group, and he’d been a hoofer and a tap-dancer, he was from Wigan, and he used to do these classes that… I don’t even know what you’d call them. I think they were given a name like ‘Action’ or something like that, but I think it was just because they had no idea what to call these classes! You never knew what was going to happen when you walked in there.
E: What did happen when you walked in there?
M: It was sort of loosely improvisation. And Ben sort of taught me to be fearless, really, and to take risks and not to be afraid of looking stupid and making mistakes and being spontaneous and not being too bogged down, because on the one hand we’d have acting classes that were very kind of Method-based, very structured and I guess there were a lot of rules to it. And then in Ben’s classes you’d just have to break all the rules and not be frightened. So I think he had a //huge// influence on me — even now, whenever I’m working on anything, there are things that I still actively use that I learned from Ben. Mainly about just being spontaneous and not being frightened of taking risks.
E: So from Godfrey you got the roots of the discipline, and from Ben you’ve got the impulse to cut loose a little bit.
M: That was the thing. On the one hand, you have the acting classes that were a very much American-based Method system, I suppose. And it felt very rigid and a lot of people got very bogged down by it and I really enjoyed it, but I enjoyed it in conjunction with Ben’s classes that made me never forget that you have to enjoy what you’re doing and you have to have a sense of play and take risks and not be frightened to look stupid. Which has come in handy a lot of times in my work.
E: Such as?
M: Well, doing something such as Dirty Filthy Love where I was playing a guy with Tourette’s and OCD, I really had to not be frightened of looking stupid, and I really had to take risk. You know, in a lot of the stuff I’ve done, like playing real-life people, one of the hardest things to get past is your own fear that you’re gonna look stupid and people aren't going to accept you. You have to really take risks with that kind of stuff and so that's really helped, to kind of have a fuck-it attitude.
E: Obviously now, playing real people is what you're best known and best loved for — playing Kenneth Williams, Tony Blair, David Frost, Brian Clough… Is it fair to say that Peter Morgan had a lot to do with putting you in this great position?
M: Yeah, absolutely. Well, first of all, before I talk about Peter and Stephen Frears I would say my single biggest influence in terms of playing real people was my daughter. Because when Lily was really little she'd watch the Disney films or the Pixar films like Monsters Inc. I remember watching Monsters, Inc with her a lot, and Beauty And The Beast and all this kind of stuff, and she was so into these films and these stories that she would want me to be the characters from these films. When I'd be giving her a bath, she'd want me to be Mike and Sully from Monsters, Inc, or she'd want me to be all seven dwarfs from Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs, and so we would do these scenes and I would have to act with myself while she was having a bath. I'd be in the characters from these things and slowly I started to realise because she was totally non-judgmental about listening to me, she wouldn't say "that doesn't sound anything like them Daddy," she would just listen and accept it and enjoy it.
So slowly I started to realise that I could actually sound like these people, like these characters, so //she// really gave me the confidence, because I never felt like I could ever do impersonations or mimic people or anything like that before, and she sort of gave me the confidence to feel that I could actually //do// this kind of stuff.
So then when I first played Blair, for Stephen Frears and Peter Morgan on The Deal, I thought, "no I can do this," because I'd been able to play all those characters for Lily. So she first and foremost was the biggest influence to me in terms of that.
E: So you do a good John Goodman and Billy Crystal?
M: Exactly. Yes. And then Stephen Frears, who has had a big influence on me as well, the first film I ever did was with him was Mary Reilly. We got on very well and he said, “one day we'll do something much more substantial together,” in terms of the part I was playing. I was just doing a little part in Mary Reilley.
Years later his casting director came up with the idea of me playing Blair in The Deal and so I met up with Steven and he kind of made that happen. Peter Morgan always says, “Stephen Frears said we can only do this film if Michael Sheen plays Blair, and he's doing a play so we've got to change the schedule round for him,” and all this kind of stuff. He was going, “who the fuck is Michael Sheen? And why are we having to move all this for him?” And then, of course, touch wood, Peter and me have had this extraordinary relationship where he's had a huge effect on me.
So it was through Stephen I met Peter, and Steven has subsequently been a kind of mentor to me, and someone who who I see socially a lot, and who's come to me a lot, and who I talk to on the phone, and he's someone I'll always go to for advice. Not just about work, although that's obviously been a huge thing, but also I know I've learnt a lot about scripts, how to work on scripts, through him. Also he now is extraordinarily… I mean, he called //me// for advice the other day, which kind of amazed me! So that's been a really great relationship in my life and hopefully that will carry on.
E: And Peter?
M: And Peter, of course. I'm not aware of a relationship between an actor and a writer like the one me and Peter have got, and I will always, whether I work with Peter again ever and I hope I do but even if I don’t I will always be hugely indebted and grateful to him for the work that we've been able to do together. It's been the most satisfying work I've ever done, and the most stimulating. I've learned so much and it's done a lot for me. He's had a huge influence on me, obviously.
E: What would you say is the best piece of advice you've ever been given, and who gave it to you?
M: The best piece of advice I've ever been given? Probably, “don't listen to anyone”. I can't even remember who said it. It was probably Stephen. It was probably Stephen, who said "there are no rules, I have no idea what I'm doing," and I suppose in some ways the best piece of advice again is from someone I never met — which is Joseph Campbell, who basically says to follow your instincts and you have to tread a path that that nobody's ever trod before. And I found he really helped me, especially in this business, because you're always kind of tempted to compare yourself to other people, and because you're often auditioning for parts that other people are up for and that other people get, it's always difficult not to compare yourself or be jealous, or to want what other people are doing or care about not getting certain parts. That I learnt from Joseph Campbell.
But that combined with Stephen's attitude of "I don't know what I'm doing," you just see what goes and see what evolves, just get out of the way and let other people do what they are best at. That's always been a very good piece of advice for me. You know, I try not to get in the way of things too much, just let things sort of evolve, and, if other people are better at doing things than you are, then let them do it.
On the one hand I'm a bit of a control freak, I want to be in control of everything, be in charge of everything. But I've learnt more and more to accept people who are better at something than me and to celebrate and enjoy that and to be more collaborative. Peter has told me that as well, because Peter is so collaborative in the way he writes and the way he works and the way he responds to what I'm doing — and Steven as well where he just has such a respect for me. In a way he taught me to respect myself more and what I do more, because he respected what I did so much and that had a big influence on me.
E: Which film would you say gave you a love of film more than any other?
M: Well, my favourite film of all time is a film called A Matter Of Life And Death, which is a Powell And Pressburger Film, and because that, for me, that's everything. It's a fantastic story first of all. I loved it when I was a kid because it has that sort of element of the fantastic to it with the stairway to heaven and the fantasy element that I love.
E: Is that a family favourite then?
M: No, not all. I just came across it myself. My mum and dad aren’t really into films and all that. And then, as I grew up it came to mean more to me in different ways. I saw different levels going on about the nature of reality and the strangeness of it. And then, as I found out more and more about the film, I could see how technically brilliant it was, how every shot is framed beautifully and the acting, so it's something that has stayed with me more and more and been a huge influence on me I suppose.
E: How, precisely?
M: As a film it presents two forms of reality and never asks you to choose between them, and that was the revolutionary thing about the film and I think it still is a radical film for that reason. In most films that have an element of the fantastic and an element of everyday reality you're ultimately asked to choose between which one is real, whereas that film says it doesn’t matter. That’s not the important part of it.
That, I think, has been a huge influence on me in that on the one hand my acting career is very much known by one set of people, who know me for portraying real-life people and it's all very real and based in this very intangible reality. And then on the other hand, you’ve got all the Underworld films, the more fantasy-based stuff, which is more closely related to my tastes and what I enjoy. I enjoy reading Stephen King and Neil Gaiman and Philip K. Dick, and that's much more what I'm into. So the combination of the two is what I find interesting and that was something I felt I got very much from A Matter of Life and Death.
E: That leads very much to the next question I'm going to ask. Outside of film and theatre what or who has inspired you in particular?
M: It's a combination of it all really. I mentioned Joseph Campbell, already and Carl Jung was a big influence. When I was a kid, Kevin Keegan and Barry John were big influences from football and rugby. Music-wise I've always been… I love music, I listen to music all the time, I have a very wide range in taste of music. I love everything from Radiohead to… Actually a big influence was Peter Gabriel's album from The Temptation Of Christ, where he got together a whole range of people from all over the world to make the music for that soundtrack. That soundtrack has been very special to me and I listen to it when I need to think or come up with ideas or just get inspired. And through that album I've gone on to listen to people who appeared on that album, and that was a big influence on me as well.
E: And you mentioned Stephen King earlier…
M: I've been reading Stephen King most of my adult life. I remember I went to have an interview at Oxford before I decided I was going to go to drama school and not University, and I remember I was going to do English there, and the dons, when they were interviewing me, asked me what my favourite book was. And I said — and I was completely truthful about it — it was The Stand by Stephen King. And they seemed to pretend that they'd never heard of Stephen King there. And very much looked down their nose at that, and it made me want to celebrate it even more!
I just recently finished reading The Dark Tower series of books and I just think it's an extraordinary accomplishment, how he made them out of his own life as one of the characters, and that's what Joseph Campbell used to say: "discover what is the myth and you'll live it," and what your story is and what your hero’s journey is. I can see how all that stuff comes together, and that’s very much what I'm interested in doing in my work, which is why I want to move more in to developing my own stories and writing stuff myself, and maybe directing myself. That's the next chapter for me.
E: Are you working on anything at the moment?
M: I'm in nothing official. Yet. But that's more what I'm going into: producing, writing, directing as well as acting.
E: Is there anyone else in your life you would like to mention as a big influence on you?
M: There is one other person I would like to talk about, who I missed out, which is the Director Declan Donnellan, who runs a theatre company called Cheek By Jowl. He had a huge effect on me as well. A lot of what I learnt about acting, I learnt from him, the stuff that I use all the time.
There were all kinds of things that he said that I still remember. I remember him describing acting as being essentially "a really frightening experience," which is why everyone says, “I don’t know how you can be an actor”. A lot of what actors do is try to make themselves feel more comfortable and Declan always said, “don’t do it. Don't try and make yourself more comfortable. That's a mistake and all bad acting is based on trying to make yourself more comfortable in a frightening experience, during a frightening situation, and you have to do what you can to stop that. To allow it to be frightening and allow it to make you feel anxious and vulnerable and exposed. And that had a huge effect on me. If there was one note that anyone had ever given me in my life in terms of acting, that would be it. Don't base what you do in your work, or how you live your life, on trying to pretend that you're not frightened. Life is fairly frightening and the more you try to pretend that it's not, the more you start living an inauthentic life, and you become a more dishonest actor and dishonest storyteller. So I suppose at the heart of everything, you asked me what's the best piece of advice, I'd probably say that. And I don’t think Declan meant it in terms of life, but that's what it's come to mean to me about acting, life and everything.
E: I suppose what's at the other end of the scale from anxiety is boredom…
A sort of deadness. Inauthenticity. Like living a pretend life. It's not your real life. You can't connect to any emotion as an actor authentically if you can't connect to what you’re actually feeling at the moment. How can you pretend to be feeling what a character’s feeling if you're not acknowledging the essential truth of the moment, which is that you're doing something that's quite frightening?
E: Overall, how much value do you place on the relationships you’ve had in your life, and how much are you the sum of those the parts?
M: More and more so as I get older I come to value relationships much more, but when I was growing up I was so set on acting and film and theatre that I lived in kind of a bubble, really. I think as I've got older more and more, I've tried to break out of that bubble and I value the relationships. The relationships I've had have always been very meaningful to me and had a huge influence on me, I just don’t think I was aware of it when I was growing up and I'm becoming much more aware of it and trying to put more energy into that consciously rather than just spending all my time working and thinking about work and acting.
So yeah, it's had a huge effect on me. I mean, I spent nine years with Kate [Beckinsale] and she's the mother of my child and she obviously had a huge effect on me, and that relationship did. We grew up together and it was my first really really serious relationship, so obviously that had a huge effect.
My parents have been hugely supportive and, to be honest, I think there are two major things that have meant I've become an actor, and that's my parents and their support. I realised when I got to drama school that that's not something everyone has. I would never have become an actor and never had the success I've had if it wasn’t for the support of my parents and the youth theatre. If the youth theatre hadn't have been there and Godfrey Evans hadn’t run it the way that he did, I wouldn’t have become an actor. Two huge relationships that have had an effect on me. Like I said, my daughter, and my family more and more as I've started to lose members of my family, like my grandparents. You start to value those relationships more and more because you realise they don’t stay around forever.
