Michael Sheen

  ...The Assembly was a Q & A session in which he took questions from a group of  young neurodiverse people. Sheen didn't have a clue what would be asked, and no subject was off limits. It made for life-affirming telly. The 55-year-old Welsh actor was so natural, warm and encouraging as he answered a series of nosy, surprising and inspired questions...

"The Assembly's had more response than anything else I've ever done," Sheen tells me. "Almost every day someone will come up to me  and mention it, particularly people who have children with autism... I had a fantastic time." He replays some of his favourite moments: the young man who took an age to start talking and then delivered the most beautifully phrased questions about the influence of Dylan Thomas on Sheen's life...

Arenig, North Wales
James Dickson Innes (1887-1914)
Photo Credit:Tate  [CC  BY-NC-ND] 

Six years ago he swapped life in Los Angeles for Port Talbot, the steel town where he grew up. These days he calls himself a not-for-profit actor - a term he happily admits he's invented. "It means that I try to use as much of the money I earn as I can, go towards  developing projects and supporting various things."...

Sheen is best known for transforming into household names - Brian Clough in The Damned United; Chris Tarrant in Quiz; David Frost in Frost/Nixon; a trio of films as Tony Blair... He has a gift for inhabiting famous people - voice, body, soul, the works...

But the work that changed his life was his 2011 epic three-day reimagining of The Passion on the streets of Port Talbot involving more than 1,000 people from the local community... helping the disadvantaged town in whatever way he could...

The longer he lived in Los Angeles, however, the more rooted he felt to Port Talbot. And the further he travelled, around the world or just in Britain, the better he understood how disadvantaged it was...

Swansea
British (Welsh School)
Photo Credit: The National Library of Wales [Public Domain]

And that was connected to a political awakening. He started to read up on Welsh history. In 2017 he returned his OBE because he thought it would be hypocritical to hold on to an honour celebrating empire when he was giving a Raymond Williams lecture on the "tortured history" of the relationship between Wales and the British state...

He doesn't tell me he sold his two homes (one in America, the other in Wales) to ensure the 2019 Homeless World Cup went ahead as planned in Cardiff. Nor does he mention that a couple of years ago he started Mab Gwalia (translating to "Son of Wales) which proudly labels itself a "resistance movement".... Its projects have supported homeless people, veterans, preschool children on the autism spectrum, kids in care, victims of high-cost credit and local journalism.

Would he ever go into politics? He looks appalled at the idea. "Oh God, no. No! I'd be awful." "Why?" "Because I don't want to say what other people are telling me to say if I don't agree with it... People say I should go into politics because I'm passionate about things and I speak my mind.But then you get into politics and you're not allowed to do that any more. I've got far more of a platform as myself. I can say what I want to say...

(Simon Hattenstone, The Guardian, 2024)

How refreshing. An actor who is the perfect antidote to the mindless antics of many a celebrity.