Man of the People
Michael Sheen is known for his critically acclaimed roles on screen and stage. Yet the man most famous for his portrayal of Tony Blair is really a ‘nerdy geek’ who adores fatherhood, fairy tales and football
WORDS | ELAINE LIPWORTH
BRITISH ACTOR MICHAEL SHEEN IS AN ENIGMA.
One of the UK’s hottest exports in recent years, the critics adore him. He is the opposite of a star in the head-swivelling Hollywood sense. Known for his carefully nuanced performances of real people (his portrayal of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair in The Queen was creepily accurate), he has the kind of serious career most stars would give their eye teeth for, with BAFTA nominations for The Queen and TV dramas Kenneth Williams: Fantabulosa! and Dirty Filthy Love.
Yet here he is telling me how his heart lies, not in theatre and highbrow roles, but in sci-fi fantasy; that his favourite author is the shock-horror blockbuster novelist Stephen King, and that he narrowly missed a career as a professional footballer.
Sheen is sipping tea at the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles. The 41-year-old Welshman runs his fingers through Dylanesque curls. In spite of the grey that peppers his brown hair and lightly lined face, he retains a boyish air. Slim, wide-eyed and friendly, he is unrecognisable from any of his famous on-screen personas – Tony Blair, flamboyant actor Kenneth Williams, heavyweight journalist David Frost and outspoken football manager Brian Clough – evidence, perhaps, of his chameleon-like ability to immerse himself in diverse characters.
He is dressed in a grey Hugo Boss suit with a checked open-necked shirt. I tell him he is looking good, every inch the Hollywood star. He laughs, surprised at the compliment. “My ex-partner Kate (Beckinsale) used to say that, if I liked particular clothes, I’d wear them regardless of whether they go together or not. Come to think of it, what I wear at any time does tend to be heavily influenced by the character I’m playing because I explore the character through the clothes as much as anything else. With the real people I’ve played, I spend an awful lot of time making sure that the look is as close as possible. It’s as important as the voice, the walk, the tiny mannerisms.
“But the way things have been going at the moment,” he says of his career. “I can see how you can actually become less connected to people, less open and spend your time in a limo, or in a room, where people say ‘yes’ to you a lot. You can become very disconnected from people, and that can’t be good for acting. But then again, I can’t think of any other profession where you can be walking down the street, a bit down on yourself or whatever, and an absolute stranger walks up to you and says how much they like what you do.”
Sheen’s career trajectory has been meteoric since he first stormed the nation’s stage, prodigiously young, during his second year at RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Art), to star opposite Vanessa Redgrave in When She Danced in London’s West End. He is prolific in film, television and theatre. This autumn he appeared in his third and final TV film about Blair, The Special Relationship, while doing voice-work as Dr Griffiths in Disney’s Christmas DVD release, Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue. He steals the show in this year’s Boxing Day blockbuster, Tron: Legacy – a sequel to the Sixties sci-fi classic. And next year, he is reprising his role as the vampire Aro Volturi in the next instalment of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, and appearing in Woody Allen’s film, Midnight in Paris. He’s also returning to the stage at London’s Young Vic theatre in the title role of Hamlet.
Today, we’re not here to discuss the big-screen roles that have made Sheen’s name, but Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue, an animated film that must have been an entirely different challenge.
“The obvious difference between making my usual movies and an animated film is that you are not with other actors,” says Sheen. “Normally on a film, I have a strong sense of what I’m going to do and what I’m going to explore. But with this, you have to put yourself in the hands of the director.”
What themes could a serious actor possibly explore in an animated fairy tale? “Dr Griffiths is a man who has let work and the responsibilities of the adult world allow him to become disconnected from his daughter,” says Sheen. He knows the joys and pressures of parenthood only too well. His 11-year-old daughter, Lily, with Beckinsale, is the reason he has chosen to reside in the US, though he says he will probably return to the UK when his daughter is older. He shares custody of Lily with Beckinsale, who, in the spring of 2003, left him for director Len Wiseman, and with whom he has striven to retain a good relationship.
“I think being a parent is the most challenging thing you do. That’s why we’re here. It’s at the heart of what it is to be a human being. It’s the ultimate experience because it questions everything about who you are.
“It’s difficult,” he continues. “When I’m filming, I try to speak to Lily every day and stay a presence in her life. I want to set a good example as a parent who is passionate about their work and enjoys it. But at the same time, I don’t want it to be something that takes me away from her too much, so it’s a balance.”
Sheen has no plans to push Lily to be an actor. “I hope I’m not going to live vicariously through my daughter,” he says. “She’s a very good writer, and her mum and I are kind of both frustrated writers, so part of me would really love her to do that.”
Until recently Sheen shared his life in LA with Royal Ballet-trained dancer, Lorraine Stewart, who he met in 2003 after the split from Beckinsale. However since October, he has been reportedly dating 31-year-old Canadian actress Rachel McAdams, his co-star in Midnight in Paris. After the brutal glare of the media spotlight on his split from Beckinsale, he refuses to discuss his personal relationships.
The new romance appears to be a meeting of kindred spirits. “I am only interested in being around people who are passionate about something,” says Sheen with conviction. “I can’t relate to someone who does not have a passion.”
Born in 1969, Sheen grew up in the small Welsh town of Port Talbot, home to two other Hollywood legends famed for their passionate perspectives on life and art: Richard Burton and Anthony Hopkins.
“In many ways, Port Talbot was violent and horrible,” says Sheen. “I think that there’s a kind of dark energy in the town. It’s dominated by the steelworks, this fire pumping out energy every day, and I think that is a good symbol for a kind of restless, fiery kind of energy you find there.
“I’m definitely passionate and obsessive, and maybe that is a result of where I grew up. I look at actors like Burton and Hopkins, and what they have in common is a dark anger that comes out in their acting. They’re at their best when they’re really letting all that anger go. I can see that in me as well.”
As a child growing up in Wales, however, his mentors weren’t those acting icons. Sheen’s first love was sport. “Football was my whole world. I couldn’t have cared less for anything else. We went on a Pontin’s family holiday on the Isle of Wight, where I played a game of footie with Tony Adams [former Arsenal player and now football manager of Azerbaijan’s Gabala FC], who was 16 at the time. I must have made an impression.”
Adam’s father invited Sheen to join the Arsenal Football Club youth team. But it would have meant uprooting the whole family, so Sheen’s father refused. “There was no way they were going to give up their work, their home and their friends. I was the angriest 12-year-old in the world at that time.”
Transferring his allegiance from football to the stage, Sheen enrolled in a local acting school, where he wowed teachers. Later, in his second year at RADA, Sheen won the prestigious Laurence Olivier bursary. At 21, he left RADA early to play opposite Vanessa Redgrave in Martin Sherman’s When She Danced. His first TV role in Ruth Rendell’s Gallowglass quickly followed. Reflecting on those early days in his career, when he and Beckinsale dominated stage and screen, Sheen is endearingly modest.
“There’s a tendency to want to make it look like things just happen spontaneously, as if you have some sort of god-given talent and that you don’t have to work hard at it. But that’s nonsense.
“There’s a famous Paul Newman quote: ‘You know, I’ve been very lucky, but I’ve started to realise that the harder I work, the luckier I became.’”
Sheen drives a modest Mini Cooper in LA. And his biggest extravagance, aside from fine wine and good restaurants, is books, though his tastes are surprising. “I’ve been reading Stephen King most of my adult life. I went to an interview at Oxford University before I decided I was going to go to drama school, and the dons asked me what my favourite book was. I said – and I was completely truthful about it – The Stand by Stephen King. And they pretended they’d never heard of Stephen King. They looked down their nose at that, and it made me want to celebrate it even more! It’s a great book that shows you a new way of looking at the world, whilst also confirming everything that you’ve always known.”
Given that he is known for his intellectual stage and screen work, it’s a surprise that his real love is for more populist fantasy. “As a kid, I was reading Lord of the Rings. I remember watching Tron and The Wizard of Oz, which were formative for me. So really, being able to be a part of films like Tron and Twilight, it’s much closer to where my heart lies. I’m a nerdy geek, and so a holiday for me from doing the norm is doing the so-called highbrow stuff.”
It is probably the “highbrow stuff”, however, that secured him an OBE for Services to Drama in 2009 and gave him the opportunity to finally meet the real Queen, not as his fictional Blair, but as himself.
“Going to the palace was incredibly déjà vu-ish,” he tells me, “because I had already done it on film and yet, of course, that wasn’t the real thing. But our sets had been so accurate that it was quite peculiar.
“The Queen said to me: ‘What are you doing next?’ [Sheen perfectly impersonates her voice]. The next thing I was doing was Tron, and I thought: ‘I don’t think I’m going to tell her that because she won’t have a clue what I’m talking about,’ and so I sort of fibbed and said, ‘I’m playing the Prime Minister again,’ because the next film after Tron was The Special Relationship. I now wish I had said ‘Tron’ just to see her reaction.”
Sheen’s daughter, Lily, accompanied him on his visit to Buckingham Palace. Is she very proud of her father, I ask? “Kate’s father was a famous actor [Richard Beckinsale, best known for his role in Seventies TV sit-com Porridge], and Kate is a famous actress, so Lily has grown up with acting as the family business.
“I think the surprise was when she realised that I was an actor. I don’t think she quite knew what I did,” he laughs. “It’s been something of a revelation to her over the last few years that oh, actually, Daddy’s quite well known, too!”
Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue is out now on Disney Blu-ray and Disney DVD.
