“If you see a gap and you think it’s worth filling, you have to just do it,” says Michael Sheen, beaming broadly. “Life’s short, you know? You just have to make something happen.”
The ebullient 56-year-old Welsh actor seems to make a lot of things happen, throwing himself wholeheartedly into one project after another. Known to many for his uncanny screen portrayals of public figures — Tony Blair, Brian Clough, David Frost and Prince Andrew among them — this is also the man who staged a vast three-day community play across the streets of his hometown, who spent ￡100,000 of his own money wiping out debt for 900 people in south Wales and who is still paying off the bill for mounting the Homeless World Cup in Cardiff.
Latest on his to-do list is the fledgling Welsh National Theatre — founded and largely funded by him — which kicks off next year with two epic pieces of drama. That he’s sitting still long enough to eat lunch seems rather remarkable.