Shine on Sheen
Up close and personal with the chameleon-like actor Michael Sheen
He makes a convincing Tony Blair on the big and small screens and a compelling David Frost on stage. No wonder Michael Sheen rarely has time for a lie-in
Words: Alistair Duncan
“NEVER STAND UP when you can sit down. Never sit down when you can lie down. And never lie down when you can be asleep.” Actor Michael Sheen often heard his grandfather repeat this pearl of wisdom when he was growing up in a small town in South Wales. He never forgot it. In fact, it became his motto for life, the 38-year-old tells me. Only, frankly, I don’t believe him.
Following two show-stopping performances as Tony Blair, first in television drama The Deal then in the movie The Queen (for which he won a BAFTA nomination), appearing in Hollywood thriller Blood Diamond with Leonardo DiCaprio and a raft of stage roles, including his latest, Frost/Nixon, due to travel to Broadway in April, Sheen might be many things, but a slouch he most certainly is not.
“Well, I used to consider myself to be a lazy person, at any rate,” he says, offering a slight revision. “The truth is I don’t get that much time to be lazy at the moment. I’m incredibly busy. So whenever I do get the chance, I have the longest lie-in I can.”
Michael Sheen’s chameleon-like capacity to change from role to role is constantly amazing.
There is no danger of typecasting him. Just look at the vast range of parts that he has played. As a young RADA graduate, he got the title role in a Royal Shakespeare Company production of Peer Gynt, at the Barbican in 1994 becoming an immediate hit with critics, who praised his electrifying presence, strong voice and androgynous sexuality. Then he became a blistering Jimmy Porter, John Osborne’s iconic angry young man in Don’t Look Back in Anger at the Royal Exchange in 1995 (later reprising the role at the National). Next, he took on Robbie Ross, Oscar Wilde’s first gay lover, in the Stephen Fry biopic of the playwright, before returning to the stage for an “outstanding” Mozart in Amadeus at the Old Vic, later travelling to Broadway. After that, he morphed into the Roman Emperor, Caligula, at the Donmar Warehouse. In the same year we watched his frighteningly well-observed Tony Blair in Stephen Frears’ television drama about the Prime Minister and Gordon Brown’s infamous agreement about the leadership of the Labour Party, The Deal.
After a hilariously comic turn as a delusional estate agent in The UN Inspector at the National, Sheen’s thrilling diversity reached an apex in 2006, when he appeared in television, film and stage roles as four separate real-life characters: as tormented comedy actor Kenneth Williams in BBC4 drama Fantabulosa!, as Nero in a television series about the lives of Roman Emperors, as Tony Blair (again) in award-winning film The Queen and, most recently, as Sir David Frost in stage drama Frost/Nixon.
ONE EMINENT FILM critic recently wrote: “If Michael Sheen can do Tony Blair and Kenneth Williams – and I mean ‘imitate’ in a deeply personal way – then maybe he can do anyone.” So how does this character actor par excellence undergo each transformation? How does he get under the skin of these men?
“If a film or play is being made about someone, then it’s normally because they’re famous,” explains Sheen. “That means that there will be heaps of film and audio footage of them. I spend a long time researching, just soaking it all in.”
He modestly claims that it’s “quite straightforward” (clearly it isn’t), saying that the lion’s share of the work takes place before he gets on stage or goes on set. “You don’t want to show up to be in a scene with Helen Mirren as the Queen and start thinking about all the research. You have to be that person – you have to be Tony Blair.”
I wonder whether there’s any danger that his characters ever seep into each other; whether halfway through a scene his Tony Blair characterisation crops up in his Kenneth Williams portrayal, but Sheen laughs at my suggestion.
“I’m not Rory Bremner. That might be a problem for an impersonator like him, having to do 10 characters in quick succession. I have long periods in between roles and what I do is try to become each character. I try to find out why they do what they do and act the way they do, so there’s no logical reason why one character would crop up in another.”
Sheen hasn’t met any of his real-life characters during research and he sees this as a good thing. “If you meet the person while you’re working on the role, building up the performance, you inevitably make a connection. You feel protective of him. That might mean that you can’t give a completely three-dimensional performance because you shy away from showing certain sides to the character.”
Frost/Nixon is Sheen’s latest triumph. The stage docu-drama based on Sir David Frost’s legendary 1977 interviews with Richard Nixon, after the Watergate affair and the disgraced American President’s departure from office, turns on the fact that Frost managed to elicit an apology (of sorts) from the shamed politician, as he acknowledged mistakes over the way he tried to corruptly cover up the scandal that engulfed the United States.
As it happens, the week before I interview Sheen, I interviewed Jonathan Dimbleby for another publication. Dimbleby, the seasoned interrogator of British politicians, told me with relish how much he enjoyed Frost/Nixon, saying: “It’s extraordinarily good. The producers’ desperation when Frost is being too bland and getting nothing is wonderful to watch, as is the crumbling of Nixon under Frost’s final interrogation. As an interviewer of politicians, I found it very persuasive.”
I pass on the Dimbleby quote to Sheen and it goes down a storm. “That’s praise indeed from Mr Dimbleby!” he exclaims. “I’ve found studying the art of the political interview fascinating, actually.
If you look at the way Frost used to interview politicians and compare it with Jeremy Paxman these days, they’re worlds apart. Paxman’s aggressive style is about trying to catch people out, forcing them to give an answer. That’s not always conducive to getting people to relax and speak, which is what Frost did. That’s how Nixon got talking. Mind you, politicians are much more media-savvy now. They know how to defend themselves – the style had to change.”
Born in the old steel town of Port Talbot, South Wales, in 1969, Sheen grew up in a place that, rather improbably given its small size, gave birth to two of Wales’ finest actors: Anthony Hopkins and Richard Burton. Sheen admits that it’s “peculiar” that this small place nurtured such acting pedigree. “It’s not as if everyone goes around wearing floppy hats and capes – it’s a working-class town.” But far from being put off from trying to make it as an actor (how likely, after all, would a third famous actor from Port Talbot be?) he found encouragement in the precedent set by Burton and Hopkins.
“They were both men’s men, complete hell-raisers. So growing up and wanting to be an actor wasn’t seen as being completely poncey.”
There’s always been a theatrical gene running within his family, going back several generations. Sheen’s great-great-grandfather was a classical actor, his great-great-grandmother was an elephant- and lion-tamer in the circus and since then a lot of relations on both sides of his family have been either in the circus, preachers or involved in fairgrounds. Both his parents have always been involved in amateur operatics, but “that Gilbert and Sullivan stuff” was apparently never his cup of tea.
THERE’S ALSO A good chance that the Sheen acting dynasty will continue. The curly-haired actor had an eight-year relationship with Kate Beckinsale, the English beauty who starred as Ava Gardner in Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator and appeared in Pearl Harbour, Serendipity and two instalments of vampire romp Underworld, although their relationship ended in 2003. They have a daughter together, Lily, who at the age of eight has already been in two films.
“She played her mother as a young girl in the latest Underworld, as well as another small role in a film called Click,” he says, beaming proudly. “There’s a bit too much hanging around on movie sets for an eight-year-old, though. She’s more into writing her own songs as she wants to be a pop star.”
As Frost/Nixon is travelling to Broadway (where it will be at the Bernard B Jacobs Theatre from 22 April), there’s every reason to expect that it may open up Sheen’s full potential to an American audience. Apart from anything else, a US audience will be more familiar with Richard Nixon and the whole Watergate story. As Sheen explains: “People have a much more personal reaction to him over there: what he did and what he represents. It will be interesting to see how the play goes down.”
Plaudits have been coming aplenty for Sheen’s stage and television work. Following Blood Diamond, his BAFTA nomination for his role in The Queen and one more film released later this year, Music Within, in which he plays another real-life character, Art Honeyman, a poet and political activist with extreme cerebral palsy, he’s gaining more of a presence in the film world. But Michael Sheen the glittering movie star is yet to be born.
A rapturous response to Frost/Nixon in New York might well change that. As casting directors, producers and fellow actors alike get word of one of the brightest British talents of his generation appearing on Broadway from London, the phone might well be set ablaze with offers from Tinseltown. In spite of what his grandfather might have said, a time for lying down and having a long, well-earned rest might just have to wait.
Photography: Rex Features, Getty Images, Patrick Fraser/Corbis Outline
