More Sheen

More insights into the Genius that is Micheal Sheen on BBC Desert Island disks (Hat-tip Dr. Bob) (Following on from Mr Sheen )

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His additional luxury?

From The BBC website:-

Nine things we learned from Michael Sheen’s Desert Island Discs

1. His great-great-grandmother was a lion tamer…

Michael’s great-great-grandmother Mary-Ann North, known to the family as Nanny Blower, used to tour the world as a lion and elephant tamer, he reveals to Lauren. “The legend is that one time with the lions, one of them mauled her. The claw of that lion was kept in the family and put on a chain.”

2. … and his dad was a professional Jack Nicholson lookalike

After a career in the Port Talbot steelworks and Personnel, Michael’s dad Meyrick entered a competition in the paper to find a lookalike of Jack Nicholson as The Joker in Batman – and won. “He got a lookalike agent and then he started working literally all around the world.” Meyrick was asked to go to Germany for the premiere of Batman, but when he arrived the organiser told him that Nicholson had pulled out. “So, he actually had to go and do radio interviews as Jack Nicholson.” The trouble was, Meyrick’s American accent wasn’t the greatest. “He just sort of made noises,” Michael laughed. “When a record was on, the interviewer leaned over and went: ‘You are not Jack Nicholson.’ My dad, without a moment's hesitation, had a playing card taped to the palm of his hand that was a Joker with ‘Meyrick Sheen’ written on it. He showed the interviewer and went: ‘Meyrick Sheen. Even better than the real thing.’”

3. Michael almost became a footballer until he discovered acting

Growing up in Port Talbot, Michael’s first great love – and his greatest talent – was football. “I didn’t just play football; I absolutely lived and breathed it. Every spare moment I’d be kicking a football around, even inside the house, which got me into a lot of trouble. I got spotted for Arsenal, but I couldn’t go to London because my parents were working in Wales.” However, he didn’t always find football fulfilling. “I'd be on the pitch, and I used to be adding up the numbers on the back of everyone's football tops, and I realised this was because there was a part of my brain that just wasn't getting used. When acting came along I realised, ‘Oh, this uses every single bit of me.’ I found something that I could be equally obsessed by.”

4. He left drama school after a mini-breakdown – and came back stronger

“I thought I was the bee’s knees,” Sheen says of his early days at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, one of the country’s most prestigious drama schools. “I was cast as Oedipus and thought, ‘This is the moment the world wakes up to the brilliance of me.’” It didn’t. “Nothing changed. I couldn’t understand why nobody was praising me to the skies. I sort of had a bit of a breakdown.” He left drama school for a while, then returned on Saturday mornings to watch classes. “I started to see there’s another way of doing things: being open to what’s going on around you and responding.”

5. Playing Tony Blair saved him from a career slump

“I was living in LA, kind of doing nothing. I’d sit in diners reading books, going up for auditions for a cough and a spit in the back of Alien vs Predator and not getting it.” If someone had told me one day you will be playing Tony Blair during the day and Caligula at night, I can’t imagine anything better. On a trip back to London, a woman approached him in a theatre. “She said, ‘I’m casting a story about Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. I think you should play Tony Blair.’ I thought she was a mad woman.” He was already committed to a play, but they figured out how to make it work. “I’d film in the day, then get on a motorbike across London to the theatre.” It was completely exhausting, he explains,  ”but I have a really strong memory of being on the back of the motorbike, whizzing past RADA and thinking, ‘if someone had told me one day you will be playing Tony Blair during the day and Caligula at night, I can’t imagine anything better.’ I remember thinking that being tired is a very small price to pay.”

6. When playing real people, he’s just playing a remixed version of himself

“I always liken it to a mixing desk,” Sheen says of getting into character as the many real-life people he has played over the years. “All those dimmers and faders represent me. When I'm researching, I'm looking for the points of connection with myself so that I can go, ‘well, on my mixing desk this particular quality is at four, but in Kenneth Williams it's at eight.’ But I have to use the bit in me, and make it more extreme or bring it down. So ultimately, 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.” Besides, he was never very good at impersonations. “That made me focus on the inner life of the person.  And slowly I discovered that I could do the voice, but I knew that in the process it had to be the last bit that fit into place.”

7. A 2011 theatre production changed his life and inspired one of his music choices

In 2011, Michael played Jesus in a vast, three-day immersive theatre production of a traditional Passion play in his hometown of Port Talbot. “It was absolute madness. We made the decision that it would be one performance, nonstop, over 72 hours, all over the town.” It started with 100 people on a beach at sunrise on Good Friday. “As the sun came up, I remember lying in the sand dunes waiting to make my entrance. I didn't know if anyone would be there. By Sunday night, I was being crucified on the roundabout at Aberavon Beach. There were between 12,000 and 20,000 people.” It was a turning point. “It ended up being probably the most extraordinary experience of my life. It led to me moving back to Wales and using my career as the engine to support other groups. 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.” The production also prompted Michael to select Peter Gabriel’s Passion, from the soundtrack to The Last Temptation of Christ, as his sixth disc. “It introduced me to music I’d never heard before. Right up to today, if I need to be creative or inspired, I'll put this on. There's something about this album that just goes somewhere quite deep in me.”

8. He’s convinced he could survive on a desert island – and do surgery

Michael doesn’t lack confidence when it comes to being castaway on an imaginary desert island. “I like to think I could knock up a shelter, catch fish, cook for myself. But actually, I’d be terrible. I’d be huddled under the largest leaf I could find, shouting out.” He likens it to a role he performed once: “I played a doctor in an American series called Masters of Sex. I convinced myself I could probably do surgery or deliver a baby. Of course I couldn’t. It’s nonsense.”

9. He’s given away millions of pounds of his money

“I have no idea,” Sheen said when asked how much of his personal wealth he’s given away. “I don’t keep records of it. But it’s millions.” He keeps enough to support his family. “Beyond that, as long as there’s money coming in and I know I can work, I’ve found a way to make it work. There are moments where I go, ‘Ooh, I may have miscalculated this.’ But until the work dries up, I’ll just keep going.”