Polished Sheen

MICHAEL Sheen turned stalker to get under the skin of his latest screen portrayal. The Welshborn actor has already played former Prime Minister Tony Blair (twice), funnyman Kenneth Williams and will soon be seen as football manager Brian Clough in The Damned United.

For the moment, he can be seen on the big screen as interviewer David Frost in Frost/Nixon which – and the title gives it away – tells the backstage story of the 1977 TV interviews between Frost and ex-president Richard Nixon. The interviews were screened over four evenings, attracting more than 45m viewers.

Ron Howard directs the film version of Peter Morgan’s award-winning play with original stars Sheen and Frank Langella, reprising their roles. Which is why Sheen was to be found stalking Frost, whom he’d avoided meeting before opening in the stage play. “I was a bit worried about feeling protective about him too early because it’s a fairly wartsand- all portrayal and he’s such an engaging, nice man that the danger was that I might avoid going into certain areas because I’d feel we had already established a relationship,” explains the actor.

Then one day he saw Frost walking down the street. “So I have to admit that I was his stalker. I followed him around and watched how he walked and all that kind of stuff, and took pictures of him on my mobile phone. To this day, I don’t know if he is aware. “Obviously, if you’re playing a real person and they’re involved, you want them to go along with it but it says a lot about him that it’s not a particularly pretty picture, it’s certainly a rounded portrayal and says a lot about him that he’s been so supportive and generous to us all.”

Sheen didn’t set out to make a living portraying real people. He’s drawn to people who say “we’d like you to do this job”. It’s a simple as that, he explains.

“I’d like to say that it’s because I’m drawn to iconic characters but when Ron Howard says ‘I’d like you to do this part, you just say okay’.

“Also, most of the things that I’ve done that have been real-life characters have been written by Peter Morgan, so obviously that’s part of the relationship.

“I do really enjoy the challenge of playing real people, it’s like a tightrope walk. On the one hand, you start with a script and the character exists as a character in this story, but then the more research you do, you start to feel protective towards the real person.

“You have to realise it’s not a character study, it’s a story. So finding that balance between responsibility to the story and responsibility to the real person is a bit of a tightrope walk.”

And in case you think he’s stuck in impersonating real people, Sheen also pops up in cinemas this week in the third Underworld movie, Underworld: Rise Of The Lycans playing the dark Lycan master, Lucian. A definite contrast to David Frost.

There’s always a moment for Sheen, in doing the research and working on the actual character, where he connects with the person he’s playing.

“Something connects and then it’s all about how you relate to the other person. So I learnt more about Frost through how he related to Nixon than I did just studying Frost on his own. It means something real is going on.

“Over the 400 performances of the play it was always fresh because if you’ve got a great actor like Frank (Langella, playing Nixon), it makes my job easy because all I had to do was react to him. Every time we did the performance and then the film, it always felt real. It was never a repeat of what had been done before.”

Langella has no doubt that playing Nixon for the camera was a liberation not a restriction after the stage version and he has Howard to thank for that.

The actor recalls that the first thing he shot in the film was Nixon before he resigned, although it didn’t end up in the finished picture. “It was a scene I was very familiar with and I thought I was perfectly comfortable on camera, I usually am,” says Langella.

“And Ron came up to me and said, ‘you don’t have to do it in the period of time you’re used to doing it, you can take as much time as you want – I’ve got a scissor and I’ve got a lot of film’. That really liberated my work in the movie, to break all the rhythms of the stage performance.”

INEVITABLY, his Nixon has changed over the course of the two years it’s occupied his attention on stage and screen. Acting for Langella is a moveable feast that changes every minute, every hour of the day.

“Certainly in performances in the theatre, I try to forget what that performance was that afternoon or that night and try to rediscover it again the next day,” he says.

“So there were happenings all along, from the very first day of rehearsal to the very last shot of the movie. It did change and should change. Ron likes to do a lot of takes so if you have 23 shots in a line you might as well try it 23 different ways.”

The idea of a play and now a film about a TV interview doesn’t sound enticing, although events have shown otherwise. Langella thinks people are still interested 30 years on because it’s a good yarn, a good story, a thriller.

“It’s David bringing down Goliath, which is a tried and true subject,” says Langella. “The characters themselves – one living, one not – are so original.

There’s nobody like David Frost and nobody like Richard Nixon. From my point of view, that’s why it’s one of the reasons it’s still intriguing. It’s a combination of the story and these two original, unique figures.”

Sheen recognises that Frost came from very humble beginnings and the idea of being slightly out of your depth is something that’s strong in the film. Coming from Port Talbot, he found his background helpful with Frost/Nixon.

“Always feeling you’re a bit of an outsider. One of the qualities that gets explored in the film is the similarities between Nixon and Frost, I’d say. That feeling of not being allowed into the club, you’re always going to be slightly on the outside because your background is holding you back in the eyes of other people.

“A guy like Frost seems like the ultimate club member now and knows everybody – he introduced me to Gordon Brown last night for heaven’s sake. This is the guy that has a picture of himself with every important person on the wall.

I think that’s coming from a feeling of not being really accepted in the club and that’s something Nixon shared with him as well. And that’s something I experienced coming from Port Talbot and going to drama school and then going to the big city and always slightly feeling, ‘am I going to be accepted?’”

■ Frost/Nixon (15) opens in cinemas tomorrow and is reviewed on page 11 Underworld: Rise Of The Lycans (18) also opens tomorrow