Read below an interview Michael Sheen gave to news.com.au in which he talked about Amadeus for the second time, visiting Sydney and career choices:
Even after 23 years, Michael Sheen couldn’t stop hearing the version of Amadeus he did as a young man.
Before the Welsh actor of stage and screen signed up to the production to open at the Sydney Opera House in late December, Sheen knew the play inside and out, and he was concerned.
He had heard the words, breathed the words almost every night for more than a year. “I thought, ‘Well, I’m never going to be able to not hear how everyone did it before’,” he tells news.com.au. “When I came back to the play and read it again, it was like I was hearing the production that we did as if it was yesterday.
“And being able to get beyond that and find my own way into it, and to find my own version of Salieri, was quite challenging to begin with, but even after a week of rehearsals, that’s starting to disappear and this version, our version of the play, whatever it’s going to be, is starting to open up instead.”
Back then, before the advent of the 21st century, before he had turned 30, Sheen spent a year in London, Los Angeles and New York as Mozart, the genius composer whose prodigious natural talent and youthful energy stirred such venomous jealousy in his older rival, Salieri.
Now, in his early 50s, Sheen is Salieri. It’s the kind of graduation that would inspire any artist to wonder how much of their own life and journey mirrors that of their character.
“A lot of what the role is about and is exploring is someone who has found a certain amount of success in their profession and in their society, their culture, and is part of the establishment of that culture.
“And they’re confronted by someone who makes them question whether that success is meaningful to them, someone who comes along and makes Salieri think about why he wanted to be a composer in the first place and the dreams, ideals, hope and potential of him as a young man. And had he lived up to that or not?
“At the point in my career I am and at the age I am, those are things that you do think about and question. I was in my late 20s when I played Mozart, I wasn’t really thinking about those kinds of things then.”
A versatile actor familiar to many generations, Sheen has made varied choices across his long and prolific career.
For many fans of a younger generation, he’s remembered as Volturi leader Aro from the Twilight movies, but for others, it will be his uncanny performances as real-life figures in films penned by Peter Morgan including as Tony Blair in The Queen and The Special Relationship or as David Frost as Frost/Nixon.
Or perhaps they know him best for his small screen work, as sexologist William H. Masters in the period drama Masters of Sex, as the wildly unpredictable and inappropriate lawyer Roland Blum in The Good Fight or his memorable guest turns as the aptly named Wesley Snipes in 30 Rock.
And, of course, there was his recent collaborations with David Tennant. The two met on the wicked streaming adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Good Omens and their crackling screen chemistry as an angel and a demon who despite being on opposites of a war couldn’t help but be friends, made them real-life buddies.
That friendship formed the basis of their lockdown project, Staged, in which they played exaggerated versions of themselves, failing to rehearse for a play over zoom. It was a huge hit and even after the world has reopened, a third series was just announced this month.
“That’s been a really exciting thing we’ve been doing over the last few months,” Sheen says. “There’s lots of me and lots of David in there. It’s an exaggerated version or just us making fun of ourselves. It’s such an enjoyable thing to do.”
Halfway around the world in Sydney – “this is the longest I could possibly travel away from home” – it’s often Staged people bring up when they see him out and about. Not that he’s had much time to explore the Emerald City as focused as he is on Amadeus, which he has been rehearsing down by the wharves at the Sydney Theatre Company.
The Sydney sojourn is one of those career choices Sheen is talking about, but it’s also one that has the deliberations of the man and actor he is now, in his 50s.
Sheen had his second child with partner Anna Lundberg earlier this year (he has another daughter, born in 1999, with Kate Beckinsale). “I decided that I wasn’t going to do any work for the rest of the year,” he explains. “I was lucky enough to be able to make that choice because when our other daughter Lyra was born, it was just before we went into lockdown, so I had a lot of time with her at home, and for us as a family without me having to go away. That was really important to me. I wanted to do the same with Mabli if I could.”
Amadeus in Sydney presented as a great adventure to bridge the gap between his downtime and a busy 2023.
“I thought it would be a wonderful thing for us, if we can survive the journey [to Australia], then we’ve got three months in summer in Sydney in this beautiful place. And it would be a wonderful opportunity for us as a family to experience together and before our children are at an age where they did school, when it would be a much bigger upheaval.”
The full-day trip with two small children was relatively painless thanks to some tried-and-true parenting tips collected from intrepid travellers before them. Although landing at midnight and having a completely rested toddler ready for play was a challenge.
Still, it was worth it.
It’s taken more than two decades to come back to the role he eyed from the other side of the stage all those years ago, and this time he’s doing it in a revamped Sydney Opera House with a live orchestra and an opera singer.
It’s clear Sheen is not suffering from the “mission drift” that plagued Salieri.