Michael Sheen: 'There have been times when I would have loved to be more of a star'
Famous for playing Tony Blair in three different films, as well as David Frost and Brian Clough, he is about to play Hamlet at the Young Vic. Yet the Welsh actor still remains practically anonymous.
It is a source of unending amazement to me that so many celebrities regard an interview as an opportunity to boast about their brilliance, in the belief that this will convince readers they are brilliant. This is not a mistake Michael Sheen is in any danger of making.
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Instead, the 42-year-old launches into an excitable tribute to Shakespeare, with the air of a wonderstruck child. "Hamlet's a good play. I know that sounds mad, but it really is! I mean it's really extraordinary. What's extraordinary is you can have so many different productions and actors and directors and their different visions, but it seems to kind of respond to each; it seems to adapt, and that's what I've found. What's quite freaky about it – it is actually a little bit scary – is that it feels like a living organism, it's like a thing that actually adapts. It's this weird thing where if you came along and said, well, I think Hamlet is actually about crocodiles – well, then it does seem to be about crocodiles. As long as it's within the realm of possibility, it somehow seems to throw up these things and you go, well yes, I think this is what Shakespeare actually meant! But not everyone can be right, so it's weird. It seems to kind of meet you in a way that other plays don't. It's an incredibly unusual experience."
To a young child brought up on these stories, his ancestors must have seemed like mythical giants of unimaginable glamour. But Sheen's success has eclipsed them all – and I wonder if a part of him has always felt guilty, or even disloyal, about relegating the titans of his childhood to comical footnotes in a Hollywood star's biography. Humility could be his way of trying to protect his family folklore, so I ask if he has ever felt uncomfortable about outshining them.
"No, I suppose there's a kind of size that comes with that stuff, that's the best way I can describe it. Like my great-grandfather, his life had size to it, and scale. You go, wow, the moon, God, tin mines, street preaching – and elephant taming, all that – there's size to that. And I find that size through the work I do. I've already had an extraordinary life, so I don't think it's lacked size."
I realise he has completely misunderstood the question. I didn't mean that his career lacked size compared with theirs, but the very opposite.
"Oh, right! Right, right, right. Oh, I see!" He looks astonished. "No, I was seeing it the other way around. That probably says a lot about how I see it. I'm aiming for that! That's what I'm aiming for, you see. Their size." • Michael Sheen plays Hamlet at the Young Vic, London SE21, from 28 October to 21 January 2012; youngvic.org. A limited number of day seats will available to buy in person for each performance (excluding previews)
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