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Frost/Nixon star explains how he balances individualism and humility. (3:25)
 

Full Interview (13:10)
 

Tavis: Michael Sheen is a very talented actor whose film credits include "Frost/Nixon" and "The Queen." His latest project is called "The Damned United," which is based on the real-life story of a British soccer coach. Here now, a scene from "The Damned United."

[Clip]

Tavis: Before we get started, first of all, I got to tell you I thought you were so amazing in "Frost/Nixon."

Michael Sheen: Oh, well, thank you so much.

Tavis: I was just saying to you, Frank Langella was here when that came out, but you were - I so enjoyed you in that project.

Sheen: That was an extraordinary journey, to do a play. We started it off in a small theater in London called the Donmar Theater and then went to the West End and then to Broadway, and then we did our last performance in New York on Broadway on a Sunday afternoon, and by the following Thursday morning, shooting the first scene in the film here in L.A. (Laughter)

Tavis: So you stayed busy.

Sheen: So that was a journey, which ended kind of with - at the Oscars. I remember standing on the red carpet at the Oscars and kind of going, "Wow, I'd never have thought that this -"

Tavis: (Overlapping) When you look back on the critical success of that film, what do you - it's one thing, obviously - I assume every project you go into you hope it's going to be successful, and if you don't think it's going to be you don't do it, but -

Sheen: I don't really think about that. It sounds sort of weird but I don't really think about whether it's going to be successful or not. I just read something and something says, "Yeah, you've got to do this, I'm going to do this." And then you just try and do the best you can and what happens, happens. I've got no control over that.

Tavis: So to your point, what was it about "Frost/Nixon" that got your attention, that made you want to do it?

Sheen: Well, it was written by Peter Morgan, who's written "The Damned United," he wrote "The Queen."

Tavis: This guy is busy.

Sheen: Wrote "Last King of Scotland."

Tavis: "The Damned United," "The Queen."

Sheen: Yeah, he's done a lot of stuff.

Tavis: Exactly.

Sheen: Yeah, and he's a phenomenal writer and one of the things - so the fact that he'd written it, first off. We were on the set of "The Queen," I think it was during my first day of filming on "The Queen" when Peter came up to me and said, "I've written a play for you to do, have a read of it." Then years later we ended up doing it.

One of the things that I'm always attracted to in Peter's writing is that he seems to be able to humanize people. I think there's a tendency - I know I have a tendency myself to kind of two-dimensionalize people too easily, to see things in black and white and especially with figures in power, I suppose - with people in positions of authority or power. I think it does us a disservice.

We can't truly understand why people make choices that maybe we disagree with unless we seek to understand them in a three-dimensional way rather than just looking at them in a two-dimensional way. I think what Peter is able to do in his work is to humanize and three-dimensionalize people.

Tavis: We know the Nixon story all too well, of course, here in the United States, but there was so much talk about how successful he did that with "The Queen." from your perspective, given that you were in it, how did he humanize "The Queen?"

Sheen: Well, it's a combination of things, obviously. You've got a terrific actress like Helen Mirren playing the part.

Tavis: That helps, doesn't it? (Laughs)

Sheen: It certainly helps, yeah. I think a really great performer is able to bring three dimensions, bring more depth, bring complexity, and then that, I think, in turn is what an audience kind of relates to and connects with and empathizes with.

But also I think what Peter did - it's a little bit like "The Wizard of Oz," I always think - you see this great, big face booming out a voice and then there's the little guy behind the curtain who's the real vulnerable, little person underneath. I think Peter is able to get at that a lot, to look to figures who loom large in our culture and our society and then kind of reveal the human, mushy bit underneath.

Tavis: Now to "The Damned United." The storyline here is?

Sheen: Well, the storyline here is in true Greek or Shakespearean fashion a story of hubris, a story of a man who refuses to compromise, refuses to bend his knee to anybody, and is eventually taught humility. This all in the world of football, soccer.

This is a real man, Brian Clough. He was probably the greatest soccer coach, I think, ever in British football, but he transcended sport, he transcended the world of football and sport. He was just a huge sort of iconoclastic character in Britain, almost like a folk hero.

He was a man who had no worries about giving his opinions. Whenever he appeared on the TV he was outrageous, he was witty, he was eloquent, he was funny, he was divisive, he was controversial, spontaneous, dangerous, charismatic - everything you could possibly want, certainly in a character to play.

But he was an individualist who found that he had to rely on somebody else. There was a partnership, a man called Peter Taylor who he worked with who he was very, very close with, had an incredibly intimate relationship with. But I suppose like any individualist, and I feel this myself sometimes as well, it's about a balance between being able to rely on somebody else, to accept that you need somebody else, and he found that very difficult and he eventually kind of moved away from this man, went to become the manager of the top team in this country who he'd said terrible things about for years and years and years.

They all hated him, he hated them, he was without the man he really needed to help, and he had 44 days of abject misery until he was fired and thrown out. (Laughter) That makes it sound like a very bleak story, but actually it's a very celebratory story and an extraordinary story of this man's journey to humility, I suppose.

Tavis: When you say individualist, by that you mean what, specifically?

Sheen: I guess someone who feels that they are in the tradition of the great rebel heroes, the maverick, the man who stands up against things and stands alone, doesn't want to accept that he needs to depend on anybody else. He knows the truth, he carries the baton, he's gone up to the top of Mount Olympus, stolen the fire from the gods and refuses to be punished, and eventually has to find himself on his knees, begging forgiveness.

Tavis: So when you suggested earlier than you can familiarize - I'm paraphrasing what you said - when you can familiarize with the notion of being an individualist you meant by that what?

Sheen: No, I don't like to ask for help. I like to be able to sort of go "I don't need help, I can be self-reliant."

Tavis: Is that a weakness or a strength?

Sheen: Well, it can be a strength, but I think it can become a terrible weakness. If you refuse to acknowledge that you need help, sometimes it can be a terribly dangerous thing to you. It takes real strength and I suppose real humility to be able to kind of go, "Look, I need a bit of help."

There's the kind of joke about men never ask for directions, even when they're lost in the car, I will not ask that person for directions because I do not want to look vulnerable and weak. That's the thing that I'm always drawn to in characters in ways, and that's why this man, Brian Clough, was such a fascinating character for me.

For a man who creates a persona that is so strong, so invulnerable, and yet underneath is this huge vulnerability, this huge, raw hurt and pain because he was a player, he was a football player, he was potentially a great football player. He loved scoring goals. He didn't like being part of a team; he liked to be the individual who was out there scoring the goals. His career was cut short by injury. He had a horrific injury and it finished his career, and he felt very hard done by by the football management, so to speak.

After his injury he felt like he was thrown on the scrap heap, and in the book - this film is an adaptation of a book by a novelist called David Peace. In the book, David Peace has Brian Clough saying, "And from that moment on I lived my life as revenge."

So this anger, this resentment, this kind of pain, ultimately a kind of a pain about the loss of his dream, of what you've grown up wanting to be, and so management, coaching, was always second best for him. What I find fascinating about this man, who was known for his arrogance, known for his self-belief, his self-confidence, that I realized that that was a mask that was covering up the kind of pain and the hurt of this young man whose dreams were shattered.

Tavis: How does he navigate through that, because if you're going to be in team sports, eventually, unless you're going to be a golfer out there by yourself, you're going to - and even they have caddies? How does he learn that lesson?

Sheen: He navigates his way through that by charging headlong, first, not saying - now kowtowing to anybody, just going for it by sheer force of personality, force of will, because there was such a hunger, such a need, such a drive in him.

In the film, his partner, Peter Taylor, at one point - who's had a heart attack because of sort of working with him, is in the hospital and there's a part where he says to Clough, "You've got this thing in you, this ambition, this demon inside you that can be good, it can create an energy, it can make things happen and it can be good, but it can be bad and it can take everything that's most - that you enjoy, that you love in your life away from you."

I think he finds it very hard to acknowledge that and so he just keeps going, just keeps going, until he is forced - at the end of the film there's a particular scene, without giving too much away, where he's kind of forced to recognize what he's been doing. This obsession, this kind of fever breaks at the end of the film and he finds some kind of reconciliation and kind of finds a sort of redemption, I suppose.

Tavis: I'm curious as to your take on this, because this is something I admit, and I've written about this in one of my previous books. I regard myself as an individualist in a major way as well, and yet over the course of my life, thanks to the help of some good friends, Cornel West and others included, you learn how to balance the notion of being an individualist with humility. Talk to me about your own journey in that regard.

Sheen: Well, that's something I'm struggling with all the time. (Laughter)

Tavis: See, we all do. We all do, I guess.

Sheen: Yeah, if I knew how to do it I guess I wouldn't be here, I'd be off doing something else. It's something that I've - as an actor, then, because that's all I can speak for; that's what I've done - early on in my - I've always been fairly obsessive. First of all, I was obsessive about football, about soccer, which is part of what I enjoyed about doing this film.

I was absolute - that's all I thought about, all I cared about, all I put every waking moment into. Pretty soon, when I got into my teens, that kind of changed to acting, and interestingly both things require, I think, a balance, like you say, of individualism - being aware, nurturing your own talent, your own gift for it, plowing ahead, but also collaborating and relying on the team.

When I used to play a lot of sports that was always something that I found difficult, it was difficult to find that balance. The same with acting - there is an inevitable sort of slight separation between you and the other people involved because the responsibilities are different. But at the same time I've always found that in order to get the best out of myself I have to try and make myself part of the team.

I'm not very comfortable with being the same as everyone. I'm more than comfortable with being worse than everyone else and I'm more than comfortable with feeling better than everyone else, but being the same as everyone else is tough for me. In this business, in this profession, that gets nurtured. People treat you like you're better than everyone else a lot of the time, and then behind your back they treat you like you're worse than everybody else. (Laughter)

Slowly, slowly it starts to balance out in your head, maybe. But in that way this profession is not a healthy one for someone who has those kind of qualities. So I think as I'm getting on 40 - I was 40 this year, I've been a father for 10 years, and it's been a struggle to kind of take on board the responsibilities.

I think certainly in the culture that I've grown up with, and I think maybe in Western culture a lot the maturing process, certainly for young men, is a tough one. It's a tough one. We don't have the same kind of trials and tribulations, maybe, that women go through that inevitably requires you to grow up.

I've certainly found that kind of quite difficult and it's something that I think gets delayed. It can get put off for a certain amount of time, but eventually it's going to hit you like a brick wall, and I think exactly what you're saying - the balance between being an individual, being self-reliant, taking responsibility for yourself and not blaming other people, all the rest of it, but also being able to be strong enough to go, "Look, I don't know the answers yet, I need help. I need you to help me. I am vulnerable, I don't know everything."

Finding that balance is - I guess that's what maturing is. I can talk a good game, but it's an everyday battle.

Tavis: Well, without regard to how this business treats you, I'm glad you're in it.

Sheen: Well, thank you.

Tavis: I'm glad you're in it, because you're awfully good at it.

Sheen: Thank you.

Tavis: His new film is called "The Damned United." It's good to have you on the program.

Sheen: Lovely to be here. Thank you, Tavis.

Tavis: My pleasure.