Michael Sheen as been announced as one of the speakers at this year’s TEDxSoho talk, to take place at the Cambridge Theatre in London. Tickets are available here. More on the event below:
Ler maisThe star-studded line-up now includes the Emmy-nominated Michael Sheen, who will be taking part virtually via a pre-recorded talk, as well as an in-person talk from actor Ray Panthaki, whilst singer-songwriter Tom Odell will be performing. They will be joining the previously announced speakers at the Cambridge Theatre on 30th May.
King of both stage and screen, acting legend Michael Sheen will be taking part virtually by means of a pre-recorded TED Talk, exclusively for TEDxSoho, about levelling the cultural playing field. Known for his roles in Oscar-nominated projects such as The Queen and Frost/Nixon, Sheen has also conquered the small screen, most recently in Amazon Prime’s hit TV series Good Omens.
Yesterday (April 20) Michael Sheen was finally immortalized with a painting by the street art group ARTwalk Port Talbot after being voted by the local community.
Check out some photos below:
Michael Sheen appeared in two episodes of the new BBC Two series Art That Made Us, premiered last Thursday (April 7). All episodes are available on BBC iPlayer for UK residents.
In episode one, “Lights in the Darkness”, Michael performs the 7th-century Welsh poem of resistance against the Anglo-Saxons, Y Gododdin:
Michael Sheen is set to appear on the first episode, “Lights in the Darkness” on April 7 at 9pm. Check out thr first look at him in the series:
More details below:
Art That Made Us is a landmark series that presents an alternative history of the British Isles, told through art.
Looking at 1,500 years and eight dramatic turning points, acclaimed artists and thinkers encounter key historic art works from across the UK that have shaped the history of the British Isles and inspired their own work. Paintings, sculpture, architecture, literature, drama, design and music that emerged at some of the most exciting times of crisis and turbulence in our history are all explored. Some are surprising, others are better-known but reassessed, but all take us to the heart of eight dramatic moments of historical change.
Episode one immerses us in the turbulent era that followed the Roman occupation of Britain. After the Romans leave, waves of invasion reshape the Isles and their cultures: from glittering jewellery to carved stones to intricate manuscripts. Battles over identity and faith play out in art and culminate in the rise of a new vernacular language.
In this episode, the artworks explored include sculptor Antony Gormley meeting the fifth century clay figure Spong Man; actor Michael Sheen performs the seventh century Welsh poem of resistance against the Anglo-Saxons, Y Gododdin; Scottish artists Dalziel + Scullion wonder at the monumental Aberlemno Stones (ca.500-800 AD), believed to mark the hard-fought boundary line of the Pictish kingdom; artist Cornelia Parker investigates gold artefacts of the Staffordshire Hoard that fuse pagan and Christian imagery.
In addition, Reverend. Richard Coles explores the elaborate Lindisfarne Gospels; Maria Dahvana Headley analyses how English is used in the epic poem Beowulf; The Anglo-Saxon Mappa Mundi reveals a new sense of the Isles’ place in the wider world, and David McCandless, British Library curator Claire Breay and graphic novelist Woodrow Phoenix take a fresh look at how the Anglo-Saxon age came to a dramatic end in 1066 by exploring the embroidered propaganda of the Norman Conquest in the Bayeux Tapestry.
Art That Made Us (8 x 60’) was commissioned for BBC Arts and BBC Two by Emma Cahusac, BBC Arts Commissioning Editor. It is a ClearStory and Menace Production and is a co-production with The Open University. It was executive produced by Russell Barnes, Denys Blakeway and Michael Jackson, and the series producer is Melanie Fall.
The former British prime minister and the actor who’s played him three times talked via Zoom about British identity, Britain’s place in the world, the belief in better and more for this week’s New Statesman issue. Read it below:
Ler maisOn a Sunday afternoon in mid-February, Michael Sheen and Tony Blair laughed when they first saw one another on Zoom. They are two very different national figures, but their careers are nevertheless entwined, the actor having played the former prime minister three times – most notably opposite Helen Mirren’s Elizabeth II in the 2006 biopic The Queen.
Sheen no longer looked eerily like Blair. Dialling in from Glasgow, where he was filming a new series of Neil Gaiman’s Good Omens, his thick curls had been replaced by a short shock of peroxide blond. Blair, in turn, had cut the long hair he grew during the pandemic, described in the British press as his “lockdown mullet”.
“You look younger,” Blair said. “My lockdown hairstyle was much commented on –but not that I looked younger.”
They had met to talk about the meaning of Britain, which has changed greatly since Blair left office in 2007, and since Sheen last played him in the 2010 television film The Special Relationship (opposite Dennis Quaid as Bill Clinton). During the tumultuous decade since its release, a succession of Conservative-led governments have shrunk the state after the largesse and renewal of the New Labour years. The UK has left the European Union, its identity now split between Little Englander neurosis and Global Britain fantasy – a messy rejection of the globalisation synonymous with Blairism. With the creation of an Irish Sea border, and a Brexit-sceptic Scotland, the Union itself is under threat.
Speaking a week before Russia invaded Ukraine, the two men discussed what a “British Dream” should be, the future of the Labour Party, and the UK’s changing role in the world – questions that have become more urgent since the outbreak of war.
Representing different traditions of the left, Sheen and Blair clashed over what went wrong for Jeremy Corbyn and how Labour can win again, but agreed on one fundamental challenge: watching oneself on screen.
Michael Sheen has been invited to edit this week’s New Statesman issue, set to come out this Friday (March 25), called “A Dream of Britain”. In it, he addresses the British identity and asks “what is the thread that holds us together?” Read it below:
Ler maisSo, what’s the story? Our story. The story of Britain. No, I don’t mean our history. That’s there for all to see. I mean, what’s our underlying story? Our myth. The story we tell ourselves without having to speak it. The story that shapes us. The story that tells us who we are, where we’ve been, where we’re going and what matters to us.
We may not have ever voiced it, even to ourselves. But it is undoubtedly there. After all, we have a feeling for what is “not British”. “That’s not who we are!” “Is that who we’ve become?” “That’s not the Britain I know.”
Is it something like the Great American Dream? The story that says no matter who you are, no matter where you come from, if you work hard enough, you can achieve anything, become whatever you want to be – even president. From Hicksville, US, to a Shining City on a Hill, all is equal in the Land of Opportunity.
Michael and Sharon Horgan will be playing a couple in new four-part drama written by BAFTA-winner writer Jack Thorne, set to premiere next year. More below:
Ler mais“In all actions concerning children, whether undertaken by public or private social welfare institutions, courts of law, administrative authorities or legislative bodies, the best interests of the child shall be the primary consideration”
-Article 3 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child
This is a story of a family driven apart by having to make choices no parent would ever want to make. Sharon Horgan (Catastrophe, Together) and Michael Sheen (Good Omens, Quiz) play married couple Nicci and Andrew, they have two daughters: Katie played by Alison Oliver (Conversations With Friends) and Marnie played by Niamh Moriarty (Jack Thorne’s A Christmas Carol).
The Sheen-Lundberg clan is growing! Michael Sheen took to Twitter to announce he’s expecting his third child, the second with his partner Anna Lundberg:
Michael Sheen performed at the ‘Margins to Mainstream’ event last Sunday (February 27) at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama, where he “and a supporting cast perform the work of 11 new writers from under-represented backgrounds on a journey to reveal truths from the margins of society” as part of BBC Cymru Wales’ St David’s Day content.
The 11 writers came from the ‘A Writing Chance’ program. The event was recorded to become a podcast on the Welsh radio, which you can listen here.
Michael’s mural will be the third one painted by Port Talbot’s ARTwalk group, who also painted murals of Richard Burton and Peg Entwistle. More below:
Ler maisA giant mural of Michael Sheen is to be painted in Port Talbot as the town plans to bounce back from the loss of Banksy’s ‘Season’s Greeting’ artwork.
The team behind the town’s ARTwalk say they will not let the departure of the famous artist’s artwork deter them from establishing the town as the street art capital of Wales.
“We intend the street art revolution that Season’s Greetings sparked to continue and spread,” said Derek Davies, who manages the Port Talbot ARTwalk Facebook page.