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Are all the Welsh great actors?

Michael Sheen
  • Posted at 1:20pm
  • 27 March 2009
  • by AndrewCollins-RT

In the early 1980s, the Welsh Development Agency made an ad that was all over the telly: as a helicopter-mounted camera panned majestically across hills and valleys and a doctored version of Bread of Heaven was sung by a male voice choir, a long list of businesses ran across the bottom of the screen, all of which were "made in Wales".

Although the country had its industrial guts ripped out in that cruel decade, national pride thrives. In fact, Wales has become a cultural hub, with Gavin & Stacey partly based in Barry, Doctor Who and Torchwood, yes, made in Cardiff, and the likes of Duffy, Rob Bryden, Ruth Jones and a resurgent Tom Jones conspiring to put the principality back on the map.

And then there's Michael Sheen, ubiquitous on small and silver screen – although you'd be forgiven for not knowing he was Welsh, so completely has he immersed himself in roles like Tony Blair, in The Deal and The Queen, legendary football manager Brian Clough in The Damned United (in cinemas this week), Kenneth Williams in BBC4's Fantabulosa! and David Frost in Frost/Nixon. Born in Newport, the 40-year-old has also essayed Nero, HG Wells and Caligula.

An uncommonly gifted mimic, he's rarely seen as a fictional character, such as the diamond company executive in the Sierra Leone-set thriller Blood Diamond (Monday 30 March, Screen 2).

Sheen has inevitably been compared to those other great acting Welshmen Richard Burton and Sir Anthony Hopkins (seen this week in Proof, Sunday 29 March, BBC2).

Fair enough, he was raised in Port Talbot, near Burton's birthplace of Pontrhydyfen and Hopkins's in Margam. And one of Sheen's early theatre successes was playing Jimmy Porter in Look Back in Anger, a part minted on screen by Burton in 1959.

What is it about Wales and Port Talbot in particular that produces so many fine actors (Bryden also comes from the town)?

One can only imagine the sheer warmth of the welcome in the hillsides and the poetic tradition of Dylan Thomas gives inspiration.

Sheen assured BBC Wales that he wouldn't follow Hopkins and relocate permanently to America: "I'm Welsh, it's what formed me, and it's what my interior landscape is made from. I love Wales passionately and it's the biggest influence on me."

In 1965, Burton, a heavy drinker and plagued with illness and self-loathing, wrote a poem called Portrait of a Man Drowning, later unearthed by his fifth wife Sally, in which the author describes himself as "alone, solitary, musing".

I met Sheen at the Baftas and he seemed grounded and cheerful. It seems unlikely he'll follow Burton's path too literally.

Good thing, too; there are still a few iconic figures from history he hasn't played yet.

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