Michael Sheen’s life and career read like a script too improbable for the stage—yet every detail is true, and the latest revelations from his appearance on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs have only added to the legend. On September 28, 2025, Sheen, now 56, opened up about the whirlwind chapter that defined his rise to international stardom: the moment he was asked, seemingly out of nowhere, to play former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair in the Channel 4 drama The Deal.
It’s a story that begins in a London theatre. As Sheen recounted to Desert Island Discs host Lauren Laverne, he was simply enjoying a play when a stranger approached him during the interval. “A lady came up to me who I’d never met before, in the interval,” Sheen recalled, according to the Press Association. “And she said, ‘I’m working on a love story about Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and casting it, and I think you should play Tony Blair’, and I just thought she was a mad woman, ‘what are you talking about?’ and this was The Deal.”
At the time, Sheen was already committed to playing Emperor Caligula on stage. His sense of duty was unwavering. “If I say I’m going to do something, I can’t go back on my word,” he explained, emphasizing that he didn’t “want to let people down.” Yet, through some creative scheduling—and a lot of stamina—Sheen managed to do both: filming The Deal by day and performing as Caligula at night. The logistics were as dramatic as any West End production. “We managed to work it out for me to do the play and play Caligula … at night and filming The Deal in the day, and I would film, and then someone would run on to the set and say, ‘right, you’ve got to go now’. And I would run off, and I would wet my hair so there wasn’t Blair hair any more, 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,” Sheen told the BBC.
It was a schedule that would exhaust anyone. “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 (his old acting school),” he said. “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 Donmar theatre at night, I mean, I can’t imagine anything better. I remember thinking being tired is a very small price to play.”
Sheen’s now-iconic portrayal of Tony Blair didn’t just stop with The Deal. He would go on to reprise the role in the 2006 film The Queen and the 2010 film The Special Relationship, solidifying his reputation as one of Britain’s leading actors in biographical drama. According to the Press Association, Sheen is best known for his portrayals of real people, including football manager Brian Clough in The Damned United (2009), journalist Sir David Frost in Frost/Nixon (2008), and TV presenter Chris Tarrant in ITV drama Quiz (2020).
But the story of Michael Sheen isn’t just about the roles he’s played. The BBC’s summary of his Desert Island Discs appearance offered a window into a life marked by drama, resilience, and a dash of eccentricity. For instance, his great-great-grandmother, Mary-Ann North—known as Nanny Blower—was a lion and elephant tamer who once survived a mauling, the family keeping the lion’s claw as a memento. And his father, Myrick Sheen, after a stint in the Port Talbot steelworks, reinvented himself as a professional Jack Nicholson lookalike, even traveling to Germany to impersonate the Hollywood star at the premiere of Batman. Myrick’s American accent wasn’t quite up to scratch, but as Michael recounted with a laugh, his dad would reveal a playing card with “Myrick Sheen. Even better than the real thing.”
Sheen’s own path to acting was hardly straightforward. Growing up in Port Talbot, he was obsessed with football and was even spotted by Arsenal. “I didn’t just play football; I absolutely lived and breathed it,” he explained. But even on the pitch, his mind wandered. “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.’”
His time at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) was equally turbulent. “I thought I was the bee’s knees,” Sheen admitted. Cast as Oedipus, he expected immediate acclaim. “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, returning on Saturdays to watch classes and eventually learning a more open, responsive approach to acting.
Sheen’s approach to playing real people is both practical and philosophical. “I always liken it to a mixing desk,” he told the BBC. “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.” He admits he was never much good at impersonations, which forced him to focus on the inner life of his subjects. “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.”
Perhaps the most transformative moment in Sheen’s career came not on film or television, but on the streets of his hometown. In 2011, he starred as Jesus in a 72-hour immersive Passion play in Port Talbot. The production began with 100 people on a beach at sunrise and ended three days later with Sheen’s crucifixion before a crowd of up to 20,000. “It ended up being probably the most extraordinary experience of my life,” he said. The event inspired him to move back to Wales and use his career to support others, explaining, “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.”
Sheen’s generosity extends well beyond the stage. When asked how much of his personal wealth he’s given away, Sheen replied, “I have no idea. I don’t keep records of it. But it’s millions.” He keeps enough to support his family, but otherwise, “as long as there’s money coming in and I know I can work, I’ve found a way to make it work.”
From the football fields of Port Talbot to the corridors of power as Tony Blair, from the chaos of a lion tamer’s family to the heights of British theatre, Michael Sheen’s story is one of relentless curiosity, creative risk, and a refusal to let exhaustion—or self-doubt—stand in his way. For Sheen, the price of a remarkable life has never been too high, and the rewards, both personal and professional, continue to grow.