Michael Sheen, actor

23:55One day I was doing a movement class, wandering around a room pretending to be a nose, and then the next day I was doing a read-through. I would like to see that as well, to be fair. My nose is very well regarded. I bet. Yeah, and then the next day I was there doing, you know, rehearsing with Vanessa Redgrave. It was extraordinary. It was a great break to have right at the beginning of my career. And it meant that I sort of almost immediately had choice, which is, you know, that's the most precious thing as an actor. We'd better have some more music, Michael. Your fourth choice today. What's next for us and why?

24:26This is probably one of the darkest songs ever written. So this is the Rolling Stones. It's my favourite Rolling Stones song. Give Me Shelter. It just is drenched in darkness. I think it was written in the year I was born, around 1969. The Vietnam War is going on. It's about war and violence. But they clearly, with Altamont, what was happening, and people talking about the end of the 60s and something much darker and violent. And this song seems to just be dripping in it.

25:06Stone is friendly My very life to me If I don't get on shelter Yeah, I'm going to burn you first Oh dear love The Rolling Stones and Give Me Shelter

25:30Michael Sheen, the 90s was a creatively successful decade for you. The critics loved your work, so did the public. You were described as the most exciting young actor of your generation and a string of roles in Shakespeare, Chekhov and Pinter were followed by your performance as Mozart in Sir Peter Hall's production of Amadeus. That made you a Broadway star by the time you were 30. It's all a long way from the West Glamorgan Youth Theatre. Did you feel on top of the world once you got there? That was an amazing time. I was kind of playing all the parts that I'd ever wanted to play. I remember when I was in school, really, still doing my A-levels, I think, and I was doing A-level drama.

26:09I remember reading a lot of plays to work out what I was going to do as my, you know, the practical bit where you do speeches from something or a scene. I remember reading a bunch of plays and thinking, oh, I'd like to do these plays. And it was, you know, The Seagull, Hamlet, Pier Gint, Caligula, you know, all these different plays. And I did them all in the 90s. That was when I was very busy. In 1999, you became father to Lily with your then partner, Kate Beckinsale, and you relocated to L.A. Many artists dream of breaking America. Did you? Well, it was a very strange period of time after that because I was kind of getting to do sort of whatever I wanted to do in theatre at that point back home and loving it.

26:52You know, I remember people, and you hear this so much, you know, that when you go for meetings and people, you know, say, oh, my God, you're amazing and we're going to put you in this and do this and then nothing happens. There was a lot of that. There was an innate sort of respect for theatre, I suppose, But ultimately, it was meaningless. So I found myself ultimately in L.A. because myself and Kate split up. But I lived there because Lily was, you know, growing up there. So I found myself in L.A. kind of doing nothing. I would sit in diners reading Stephen King books, essentially, and thinking, sort of thinking about what I could be doing back at home.

27:29and finding myself sort of going up and doing auditions for, you know, coughing a spit in the back of an Alien vs. Predator movie or something and not getting it and feeling... Is it demoralising? Feeling quite demoralised, yeah. And it sort of felt like that went on for a long time. I went to go and see a play, I remember, when I was back in London for a little bit. And whilst I was there, a lady came up to me, who I'd never met before, in the interval, and she said, I'm working on a love story about Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. and I'm casting it. And I think you should play Tony Blair. And I just thought she was a mad woman.

28:05What are you talking about? So this is the deal. And this was the deal. I was committed to doing a play. And I said, well, I can't do it because I'm doing this play. And everyone was like, well, you need to not do that play. And I was like, I can't. And this has happened a few times in my life where I've gone, I can see that I need to go and do this other thing, but I've said I'm going to do this. And I will not, I just can't go back on my word. Like if I've said it, I don't want to let people down. we managed to work it out for me to do the play and playing Caligula at the Donmar at night and filming the deal in the day.

28:36And I would film, and then someone would run onto the set and say, right, you've got to go now. And I would run off, and I would wet my hair so that it wasn't Blair hair anymore, put a helmet on, get on the back of a motorbike where someone would then ride me across London to the theatre where I would get off. And by the time I took the helmet off, my hair had gone all curly again, and then go into the theatre and play Caligula and then get up the next morning and do that over and over and over again. You must have been exhausted. I was absolutely exhausted. But I have a really strong memory of being on the back of the motorbike, whizzing through central London, going past RADA, and just thinking, if someone had come up to me when I was at RADA and said, one day you will be playing Tony Blair in a drama for Stephen Frears in the day and going and playing Caligula at the Don Marth Theatre at night.

29:23I mean, you can't imagine anything better. I remember thinking being tired is a very small price to play. Let's go to the music here. This is your fifth choice today. Right. Tell us what's next, Michael. I think this is quite a special band to you. Yeah. So this is the Manic Street Preachers. And I feel very fortunate that over the years I've sort of got to know, particularly James Dean Bradfield, and we've worked together on different things. And they came and were part of the passion when I did that. And I really cherish my relationship with them. But ultimately, I'm just a fan. It's a song called Ready for Drowning.

29:57And it's a song that you can just listen to. But once you start scratching at what it's about, what are they referring to? It takes you into a world of Welsh history and politics. And that is still reverberating today. It's about or inspired by something that happened in the mid 60s, where in the Trewarian Valley, there was a rural community called Capel Caelan. and that valley was flooded in order to create a reservoir to provide water for Liverpool. And this community in Capel Caelan, who were one of the only Welsh-language-speaking communities in that area at the time, were forced out. I mean, literally, their village was just underwater.

31:06The Manic Street Preachers and Ready for Drowning. So, Michael, your first performance as Tony Blair led to you playing quite a wide range of real-life figures. Brian Clough, Kenneth Williams, David Frost. You've talked about finding a point of connection with those characters and said that in some ways you're always playing yourself, even when you're giving a very convincing performance as someone we feel we already know. How does that work? I suppose people tend to assume that I was one of those kids who was always impersonating teachers and other friends and stuff, and I was not. I could not do that.

31:43In a way, it's good that I wasn't very good at impersonations because it made me go, well, I can't do an impersonation of this person, so I'm going to have to do something else. So it made me focus on the kind of inner life of the person and really trying to research them and work out why they sounded the way they did, why they moved the way they did, all that kind of stuff. And because, of course, it's a real person, there's usually lots of footage or stuff you can do the research on, which, of course, you can't do with a fictional character because they don't exist. and slowly I sort of discovered that I kind of could do the voice and that kind of thing.

32:18But I knew that in the process of it, that had to be the last bit that fit into place. If I focused on that too soon, it didn't work somehow. I mean, I always liken it to, you know, there's those fantastic things that you can watch, like behind the music and there's someone sitting behind a mixing desk going, hi, welcome to behind the music. And there's all those faders and dimmers on that massive mixing desk. Well, I sort of see me as being like that, that when I play a character, you know, I look at that mixing desk and all those dimmers and faders are at certain levels and that represents me.

32:50And then I have to change those dimmers and faders to be who the person is. So you remix yourself. I remix myself. Exactly. I remix myself. That's a really good way of describing it. I basically do mashups. I do remixes. You know, when I'm researching these people and I find out about their life and I find out what shaped them and what matters to them, I'm sort of looking for the points of connection with myself. And so that then I can go, oh, well, all right. On my mixing desk for me, you know, my, you know, whatever particular quality it is, is at four. But in Kenneth Williams, it's at eight.

33:23But I have to use the bit in me. I just exaggerate it or change it or make it more extreme or bring it down. So ultimately, yes, when I'm playing these characters, hopefully I do enough to convince people that I'm being them. But what I'm using as the raw material is me. Michael, work was going great, Gons. And, you know, we could have filled a whole episode of Desert Island Discs just talking about, you know, the wonderful acting roles that you've done. But there was another turning point that began a new chapter of your life that you're still living and writing. and that began in 2011 when you created and starred in a National Theatre Wales production called The Passion, a secular passion play staged over 72 hours in your hometown with a cast of thousands working with ordinary people and you've described it as your proudest achievement.

34:08It sounds like a huge undertaking. Tell us a little bit about how you got it off the ground. Well, it was absolute madness is what it was. I sort of look back on it now and can't believe that it actually happened but I'm very glad that it did. It was like the entire town was involved in it. Thousands and thousands of people. We'd made this decision that it was going to be one performance that lasted nonstop for 72 hours, taking place all over the town, and people could come to the official episodes of it, and then in between those official episodes, there would be other stuff that you could find.

34:39So it was a sort of very interactive, immersive experience. So when it first started, the very first thing that happened was as the sun came up on the Good Friday morning down at the beach. And I remember lying in these sand dunes waiting to make my entrance. We'd sort of spread a rumor that might be something happening at sunrise at the beach. And that was it. And so I didn't know if anyone would be there. And I remember lying in these dunes and hearing a walkie-talkie going, okay, Michael, cue Michael. And I get up and I walk down towards the beach. This is about maybe like, I don't know, a hundred people, maybe.

35:12And I did the first thing, which was walking into the sea and all this stuff happening. So we went from 100 people that morning at sunrise to them. By the time we got to Sunday night, that was Friday morning, Sunday night, being crucified on the roundabout at Abramham Beach. And it depends on who you ask, but anywhere between 12 ,000 to 20 ,000 people are there. And it's just grown over the weekend because it was boiling hot. It did not rain. The weather was unbelievable. And it was starting to be reported on the radio, not just locally, like they're reporting on it in China and Australia. And, you know, more and more people were coming to the town and it ended up being one of the most extraordinary, I mean, probably the most extraordinary experience of my life.

35:59And I mean, it became a celebration of community. That's what it was, really. It led to me ultimately deciding to move back to Wales and to use my career as the engine for being able to do the other stuff, to support the other groups and just to take that further rather than just being a photo opportunity. because you're always asked, will you come and have a photograph because then that will help support. And I was like, well, yes, but I want to do more. And whilst I've got the opportunity to do it and I've got the resources to do it, I want to do as much as I possibly can because ultimately, you know, one day that opportunity won't be there anymore and I will really regret it if I didn't make the most of it.

36:36So how much of your personal wealth have you given away at this point? I don't know. I mean, I have no idea. You know, I don't keep the records of it, But I mean, it's, you know, millions. I only need a certain amount, you know, and as long as there's enough coming in and out to keep us going. You know, I've got three kids and I've got people depending on me. So, you know, I'm not saying I can't, I haven't got enough to be able to, you know, make sure that they're all right. But, you know, beyond that point, as long as there's money coming in and I know that I can work, then I've sort of found a way to make that work for myself.

37:13And so it just goes out. So I don't really keep a record of it, but I just make sure that we're okay and that we're not going to be in trouble. And that, I mean, there are moments where I go, ooh, I may have miscalculated this. This may not work out. Ooh, dear. So things get a bit edgy sometimes. But once I get the sense that the work is going to dry up, I'll have to rethink. But until then, I'll just keep going by then. All right, let's have some more music, Michael. It's your sixth choice today. What's next? Ah, well, given what we've been talking about, this is a piece of music called Passion.

37:46It was music that Peter Gabriel put together. I say put together because he brought together musicians from all over the world to create the music for the film The Last Temptation of Christ by Martin Scorsese. And I remember watching that film when it came out and I remember buying the soundtrack to it. And this music, it introduced me to music I never heard before. You know, I mean, and ever since then, right up to today, if I need to be creative or be inspired, I'll put this on. There's something about this album that just goes somewhere quite deep in me, I think, and and just gets my mind going and and really inspires me and always has.

38:24very difficult to choose one piece from it but it seemed like a good choice given what we're talking about to go with passion

39:02Peter Gabriel, passion from the last temptation of Christ. Michael, you've said that playing certain roles has changed you as a person. I wonder which role has changed you the most? Well, I suppose, I mean, not so much the role, but the passion changed. I mean, it changed my life, changed everything. But in terms of playing an actual character, gosh, that's a tough one. I mean, sometimes it's only later on you look back and you can see how much something has affected you. Playing a character like Kenneth Williams, for instance, I remember when we filmed that, it was very low budget and I think we had 15 days to shoot it.

39:46This is Fantabulosa. Fantabulosa, yeah. Wonderful, wonderful film. So it was a really short shoot, you know. And yet I had spent months and months and months doing the research on him, because there is a lot of it. Did you listen to his Dead Islanders? I certainly did, yeah, which is extraordinary, yeah. You had to lose three stone as well. Lost a lot of weight for it, yeah. And I remember getting to the end of it, and they said, cut, and that's a wrap, and that was the end of it. I remember thinking, what do I do with all this now? I've literally physically changed myself more than I've ever done for a character.

40:18I found out more about another human being than anyone ever. And now I've got nowhere to put it. That sort of obsessive nature that I think I've recognised in myself, you know, it's perfect to be able to do that because I can be as obsessive as I want and it's all for a purpose. But then when you get to the end of it, where does it go then? I remember thinking, maybe I should ask to go on Mastermind or something. Like, I need to do something. And then I found people online who, you know, Kenneth Williams clubs and that kind of, so I sort of dip into that. But for a while I used to have to sort of be in for a little bit every day.

40:54Just to use the, exercise those muscles. Yeah, just to kind of decompress somehow or something like that. And there is a kind of grieving process as well. You sort of do, you know, letting go of these characters. It is quite hard. I mean, also getting to be David Frost for, God knows, I mean, I was David Frost for a long time doing the play in Britain and on Broadway. Yeah, Frost Nixon and then the film of it. I remember with Frost Nixon I remember thinking it's much more fun living life as Frost than it is living life as me so I used to really enjoy just being him all the time because I just sort of had this sort of attitude yeah it was just great you're obviously a much loved son of Wales and there is a mural of you but also of your dad on a wall in Port Talbot I know that you went past it on the day of your dad's funeral what does it mean to you to see it there at home?

41:46It was, yeah, it was extraordinary, really. Yeah, the day after my father died, my sister was going down into town and she saw the beginnings of this man painting a picture of my dad's face right next to me. And she went up to him and spoke to him, you know, and he said, oh, I'd heard on Facebook that your father had passed And I saw the reactions of people and I just thought, well, this man obviously had a massive effect on this community. So I thought, you know, his face should be up there next to his son's. And so my sister came home and told us and she told my mum. And so we knew then when we were organising the funeral that it was sort of on the way to where the ceremony was going to happen.

42:37And so we thought it'd be a nice idea to drive past it and stop there. And it was unforgettable. It was just wonderful. So it's time for your seventh piece of music, Michael Sheen. What have you got for us? Well, in the last sort of, I'd say sort of two or three years, really, I've developed an absolute love for folk music. It's not something I've been that into in the past. My obsessive nature has led me to now having a kind of an obsession about folk music. and ultimately I chose this song because it's a song called Dark Secret by a group called Lau. Chris Drever is the singer and this song is about coming from a small town.

43:19It has a kind of melancholy to it. This is the unplugged version of it. There is a version of it that is great but the unplugged version of it, oh, no notes. If I had a dark secret I don't know what it is If I had a hard childhood And I can't remember it Born on the Isle of Orces There's nothing else to do Laugh and Dark Secret. So, Michael Sheen, it's almost time to cast you away. You recently told the BBC's The Assembly that your greatest fear is loneliness. So how are you feeling about life on the desert island? The idea of being alone is something I sort of dream about because, you know, when you're busy and there's so much going on, the idea of just having a bit of time to yourself becomes, you know, a dream.

44:21But the reality of it is, you know, we are, no man is an island. As I'm sure I'm not the first person who said that on this show. But we are more than social creatures. You know, the idea that we are separate is, I believe, an illusion. We're not separate. We look separate. We look like we wander around differently and we have different experiences, but we are essentially one thing. And so the idea of being on your own is unnatural. It's just not right. It shouldn't be the case. So I think I would find that very, very difficult. And what about the practical side of life as a castaway? How would you handle that?

44:57I mean, you know, could you knock up a shelter, catch some food, cook for yourself? I like to think I could, but I think I would be terrible. I'd like to think that I would be able to, you know. I'm casting my mind back through the roles and thinking, will there be any research that's come in handy? I mean, you know, I played a doctor in a TV series in America called Masters of Sex. Of course, yeah. I sort of convinced myself that I could probably do surgery. I could probably deliver a baby. And of course, of course I couldn't. It's just nonsense. So the idea that I could, you know, knock up a shelter, go and catch fish in the sea, the romantic notion of that, yes.

45:34I can absolutely see myself doing it. I'd be terrible, absolutely terrible. I'd be huddled under the largest leaf I could find shouting, help! Well, listen, before you're faced with the decision and the problem, we will give you one more disc to take with you. Your final choice today, please, Michael Sheen. What's it going to be? Well, this is a song that I first heard when I was, you know, quite young, in the 80s. It's a song by a Swiss electronic band called Yellow. and it's oh yeah and I think I heard it probably first in the film Ferris Bueller's Day Off it's in that with each of my children when they're very little when I'm trying to keep them entertained or if we're walking around they're in the pram or something I find myself there are two songs that I try to replicate with my voice one is Blue Monday by New Order and the other one is this Oh Yeah by Yellow Can you give us a burst?

46:28Yes I can give you a little burst it seems to have worked with them all And the bit that they really like is I go...

46:51And that they love. And it sort of keeps them entertained and keeps them quiet. And it's worked all these years for them. And it has worked many more years for me. Even better than the real thing.

47:31Yellow and oh yeah. So, Michael, it's time to cast you away. You can have the books to take with you. We'll give you the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare and another book of your choice. What would you like? Well, possibly more than anyone else you've had on the show, the Bible and the works of Shakespeare will do me. I mean, that sort of covers all my bases, really, doesn't it? You're spoiling me that I get another one as well. But ultimately, I think my favourite book of all time is a book by Joseph Campbell called The Hero with a Thousand Faces, which is about mythology, sort of world mythology.

48:04And I love that book so much because it's sort of trying to explore the idea. Is there kind of one story that binds us all? Yes, that would be my way of staying with people and not being alone, I think. Fabulous. Well, that's yours. You can also have a luxury item. Well, I think my luxury item would be a football. All those years as a kid, I know that I was very happy on my own, just kicking a ball around. I mean, it does require something for it to bounce off. So I'd have to find quite a sturdy tree and dodge the coconuts that fall down. But yes, I think that would bring me great joy and pleasure and solace on the island.

48:44And if you had to save just one of the eight wonderful discs that you've chosen today, which would you rush to grab first? Vienna never stops making me try and reach that note. I mean, I could probably spend the rest of my life on the island trying to hit that note that Midge hits, and it always makes me sing along. So the original and the best, Vienna. And that would make up for it never getting to number one, because I don't know if anyone's chosen Joe Dolce's Shut Up Your Face as the song that they'd keep on designing this, but that's what kept it from number one. So this is revenge. This is righting the wrong that was Joe Dolce's smash.

49:20Midges Revenge. Michael Sheen, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs. Such a pleasure, thank you.

49:41Hello. It was so lovely to chat to Michael, and I hope he's very happy on his island with his football. There are more than 2 ,000 programmes in our archive that you can listen to. we've cast away other actors to the island over the years, including fellow son of Port Talbot, Sir Anthony Hopkins. You can find some of the people that Michael has played to, including Kenneth Williams, whose episode is wonderful, Tory Blair, Chris Tarrant and David Frost. You can hear their programmes if you search through BBC Sounds or on our own Desert Island Discs website. The studio manager for today's programme was Donald MacDonald.

50:14The executive production coordinator was Susie Roilance. The assistant producer was Christine Pavlovsky. the content editor was Mugabe Turia and the producer was Sarah Taylor Join me next time when my guest will be the artist Angela Harding

50:47Our culture can cancel someone in the blink of an eye. Celebrities, sports stars, politicians, influencers and royalty can all find themselves in the firing line. in the age of AI generated evidence lawsuits written in legalese you need to pass the bar to decipher how are you supposed to separate the fact from the fiction that's where we come in I'm Manushka Matandadawity and this is Fame Under Fire from BBC Sounds we'll myth bust, debunk, pre-bunk, fact check and get to the truth behind the timeline there are new episodes every week so make sure you listen to Fame Under Fire and subscribe on BBC Sounds