Michael Sheen: Making the pitch for a soccer movie

Over the past few years Michael Sheen has become famous for, well, playing other famous people. He embodied thoughtful and deliberate British Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2006’s The Queen, then turned around and nailed TV interviewer/brash socialite David Frost in last year’s Frost/Nixon.

Now he’s done it again, turning in a stellar performance as yet another well-known figure. The film, The Damned United, was released in the U.K. this past spring and has an astonishing 100 percent approval rating on RottenTomatoes.com, a website that creates average film scores based on published reviews.

Problem is, few people in North America have heard of the guy Sheen plays — British football manager Brian Clough.

“My suspicion is that the film is still entertaining and accessible for someone who knows nothing about any of those things and I hope that’s born out,” Sheen says over the phone from London where he’s just arrived home after a day of rehearsals for The Special Relationship, in which he’ll play Blair yet again.

Considered one of the best football (or, as we’d say, soccer) managers of all time, Clough was famous as much for his cockiness and habit of giving explosive interviews as he was for his talent on the field. “It’s hard to find someone who hasn’t heard of, or know anything about, Brian Clough in this country, he was such a hugely well-known figure,” says Sheen.

Clough eventually won back-to-back European Cups in 1979 and ’80 with Nottingham Forest, but the film — which is based on the book by David Peace — concentrates on his early years when as a manager of Derby County he was nearly destroyed by his bitter rivalry with Leeds United manager Don Revie (Colm Meaney). In 1974 Clough became Revie’s successor at Leeds, which seemed like a dream job, except that his hated rival’s team was still fiercely loyal to its old boss.

In terms of finding a North American audience, the film will get a little help when it screens at this month’s Toronto International Film Festival before hitting theatres September 25th.

It’ll be Sheen’s second trip to the fest; he was in town six years ago for Bright Young Things. “I really enjoyed it,” he says. “The difficult thing I find about film festivals is that I always want to go and watch lots of films and it turns out you can’t as much as you’d like because you have to do publicity for the film that you’re in. But I remember having a really good time at Toronto. It seems like a real filmgoers festival, I remember big queues of people getting into films. So I’m really looking forward to it.”

Indeed, The Damned United has plenty to keep a soccer illiterate captivated, starting with Sheen’s performance. There are obvious parallels to his portrayal of David Frost — both characters are cocky and arrogant. But unlike lesser actors who would deliver a shaded version of the same character, Sheen’s Clough is completely different than his Frost.

“For all his self-confidence and arrogance [Clough] seemed to me very much driven by an anxiety and insecurity and a need to be validated by, I guess, achievement,” says the 40-year-old actor who was, himself, a pretty good soccer player as a boy. He was even scouted by Arsenal to join its youth team, “but it would have meant going to live in London when I was 12 and my family lived in Wales…that wasn’t going to happen.”

Unfortunately, Brian Clough died of stomach cancer five years ago. But had he still been alive, Sheen wouldn’t have met with him anyway. “I’ve found in playing real people it tends to help to not actually meet them, certainly for a long time whilst you’re working on the character,” says Sheen.

Which is one of the reasons that, despite playing Tony Blair in the 2003 BBC TV movie The Deal, again in The Queen, and now for a third time in The Special Relationship (about Blair’s relationship with Bill Clinton), Sheen hadn’t met the man until an L.A. dinner party earlier this year.

“I felt at this point it was sort of safe for me to meet him,” says Sheen. “He was very charming and he looked very relaxed, like he was having a good time no longer having the pressures of being Prime Minister on his shoulders.”

But there must have been some discomfort. After all, one of the most interesting things about The Queen, just as with The Damned United, is that it gives the impression of being factual when, in reality, all of its interior moments and private conversations are largely made up by the screenwriter — who in both cases is Sheen’s long-time collaborator Peter Morgan.

“Well, I was very gratified,” Sheen recalls of his brief conversation with Blair. “He was asked by someone who was there with him how accurate the film The Queen was and he said it was pretty darn close. So no greater praise, really, in terms of the veracity of the project from the man himself who was in on all those conversations.

“I trust Peter Morgan’s research and his ability to get to at, let’s say, the spirit of the truth, or the spirit of what’s going on, if not the exact wordings,” Sheen continues, “and if I felt that it was playing too fast and loose with the truth then I would have a problem with it.”

Sheen doesn’t have to worry about the veracity of his next project, the Twilight sequel New Moon, out in November. After having played Lucian, leader of the vampire-battling werewolves in three Underworld movies, Sheen is stepping over to the other side to play Aro, leader of Twilight’s ancient Italian vampire coven, the Volturi.

“My stock answer is that the tailoring is always better with vampires,” Sheen says with a laugh. “I’ve had to do all these films as a werewolf just wearing dirty old leather and watch people like Bill Nighy and Kate walking around in these beautiful clothes.”

“Kate” is Kate Beckinsale, Sheen’s partner from the mid 1990s until 2002 and the mother of his 10-year-old daughter Lily. “My daughter is a huge fan of the Twilight series,” Sheen says, revealing his true motivation for playing Aro. “Having never been able to be a part of the Harry Potter films, probably the only British actor who isn’t in the Harry Potter films, it was nice to have the opportunity to be in something that my daughter would appreciate.”

Which makes for quite an eclectic résumé — from Underworld’s campy sci-fi to Oscar-calibre films like The Queen, Frost/Nixon and The Damned United to the teen-bait Twilight flicks.

“It does tend to be a very zig-zaggy path,” concedes Sheen. “Obviously, I am picking things subconsciously that are very different from what I’ve done last. I guess there must be an element of a change is as good as a rest. But I like to think that I have a broad spectrum of taste.”