Michael Sheen
Michael Sheen
Michael Sheen, OBE is a Welsh actor. After training at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, he worked mainly in theatre throughout the 1990s and made notable stage appearances in Romeo and Juliet, Don't Fool With Love, Peer Gynt, The Seagull, The Homecoming, and Henry V. His performances in Amadeus at the Old Vic and Look Back in Anger at the National Theatre were nominated for Olivier Awards in 1998 and 1999, respectively. In 2003, he was nominated for a...
NationalityWelsh
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth5 February 1969
CityNewport, Wales
I think a good story's a good story and a good character's a good character.
Part of the fun of life is interacting with people and not knowing what the truth is inside. Letting them reveal that to you is what binds you to people.
The secret to acting is don't act. Be you, with add-ons.
If you can define what God is, I can tell you whether I believe in it.
In some ways any film that you do has an artificiality about it. Even when you're doing the most kitchen-sinky, gritty, realistic scene you've still got 50 people standing around watching you with cameras and lights and things.
It's weird that I've ended up playing so many real live people, because I was never any good at impersonations at school.
Normal people - i.e., people who aren't actors - are the most bizarre people you can ever come across. I'll talk to someone and come away thinking, 'They are clinically insane.'
I've always had an eye for what looks good on a man. But I've not always found it easy to find clothes that look good on me.
I've always found it hard to say sorry.
Sometimes you see things in a script, and it doesn't necessarily mean the director sees the same things. And if you think you're going to be making a different film, then that's not gonna work.
I'd love to go back to Greek times and see the birth of theater and performing, in that time. It would be so extraordinary to see the need that theater came out of, in the first place. I think we could probably all learn a bit from that.
I'd love to go back to Europe in the '20s and '30s, for the beginning of the Psychoanalytic Movement, and Freud and Jung, and all that was going on with discoveries in quantum physics. The whole nature of reality was changing and being challenged.
The first thing, when I read the script, is that I need to care about what happens and feel compelled by the story and engaged by the characters. It needs to resonate with me, even if what the characters are going through is not something that I have experienced in my life. I have to feel like it has some sort of meaning to me.
The first job I ever did in the theatre, I was supposed to be a genius piano player. I couldn't play the piano, but you just sit there at a piano like you're playing, and suddenly all this amazing music comes out and the audience believes you can do it. It's the same with computers. I love scenes where there are people yanking at monitors, "yes I'll put you through now," and you know they're just doing that. But you can look brilliant at all this technology. I love it.