Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Actor best known for playing Tony Blair and other real-life figures, and for founding the Welsh National Theatre.
On the island
Eight records
ViennaFavourite
From the very first moment you hear this start. It creates an atmosphere immediately, and it sends shivers to me every time I hear it. It's the first song that I remember just getting to somewhere in me that nothing had ever got to before.
The build of it is so extraordinary. It just sort of builds and builds and builds and then becomes this kind of romantic, dramatic, over-the-top kind of piece of music. And again, it gets me every time.
Part of what I love about this, not only the music itself, but also the sort of story of what happened… Spirit of Eden, which is the album that this piece is from. And this is one of my favorite moments in it.
It just is drenched in darkness. I think it was written in the year I was born, around 1969. The Vietnam War is going on. It's about war and violence. But they clearly, you know, with Altamont, what was happening and people talking about the end of the 60s and something much darker and violent. And this song seems to just be dripping in it.
It's a song that you can just listen to. But once you start scratching at what it's about, what are they referring to? It takes you into a world of Welsh history and politics and that is still reverberating today.
If I need to be creative or be inspired, I'll put this on. There's something about this album that just goes somewhere quite deep in me, I think, and just gets my mind going and really inspires me, and always has.
This song is about coming from a small town. It has a kind of melancholy to it.
With each of my children, when they're very little, when I'm trying to keep them entertained… I find myself there are two songs that I try to replicate with my voice. One is Blue Monday by New Order, and the other one is this: Oh Yeah by Yellow.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:21How did you prepare to step into [Nye Bevan's] shoes or should I say, carpet slippers?
Well, just lived my life, really, growing up in South Wales. He is a giant figure. He looms over us all in one way or another. Although, having said that, I've been really surprised during the run of Nye both last year and this year, how many people have said, well, you know, I know his name, but I didn't really know his story. It feels like a really timely moment to be telling his story and the story of the NHS, just as we get to the point really where there's not many people left alive who were of an adult age before the NHS came in. So that kind of living memory of what it was like before and what it could be like again is starting to slip away. So it makes telling this story all the more important.
Presenter asks
3:20What inspired you to [buy up a million pounds worth of other people's debt]?
I remember the very first time I saw something around that subject was John Oliver in America in his show, and he did it around medical debt. And obviously, the situation in America is very different. And I remember watching that and thinking, oh, I wonder if I could do something similar back in Wales. I hadn't really looked into things to do with debt and high-cost credit and that kind of stuff. That sort of led to me starting up something called the End High Cost Credit Alliance, trying to sort of work with lots of different groups and organizations around those sort of issues. And, you know, ultimately led to me spending, you know, 10, 15 years or something, you know, looking at these issues and trying to find ways to do it. And I thought it was a really good way of highlighting this sort of absurd idea that you can buy other people's debt and at a much lower rate. And I thought perhaps it would be a good way to get people's attention. And that, in fact, many business models of companies are based around people being in trouble. So they know that's a good idea.
The keepsakes
The book
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
Joseph Campbell
It's sort of trying to explore the idea, is there kind of one story that binds us all? Yes, that would be my way of staying with people and not being alone.
The luxury
All those years as a kid, I know that I was very happy on my own, just kicking a ball around. I mean, it does require something for it to bounce off, so I'd have to find quite a sturdy tree and dodge the coconuts that fall down. But yes, I think that would bring me great joy and pleasure and solace on the island.
Presenter asks
14:34How did growing up in Port Talbot shape you as a person and as a performer?
As I've got older, I've realized how much it shaped me. You know, I mean, at the time. I mean, I just took it for granted, or I just assumed that everyone had the same experience. You know, it wasn't until I left Patalbot and went to London to go to drama school, and I heard other people's experiences and the sort of places they came from and the sort of upbringings they'd had, and I realized how different it was. And that's when I started to get a sense of where I came from. You know, I didn't even realize I was Welsh until I didn't live in Wales because I just assumed everywhere was Wales. I mean, I'd heard of other places, but I didn't really believe they existed. … But if you come from where Richard Burton came from, and Anthony Hopkins, obviously, people sort of saw it as a noble profession. Oh, right, yes, you're going to be another Burton. You felt very supported in that, you know. So, the combination of that, and then also, I, and again, this is something that I've become more and more aware of how fortunate I was. There was this youth arts infrastructure in the area, mainly because of one man, a man called Godfrey Evans, who set up a sort of youth theatre, a youth orchestra. … They were all funded by the local education department, and it just had a massive effect on the youth of that area. You know, it created so many opportunities.
Presenter asks
16:58How did you end up taking the acting path rather than the football?
I've always been obsessive. And looking back, my first big obsession was football. You know, I didn't just play football. I absolutely lived and breathed it. Every spare moment that I could, I'd be kicking a football run, even inside the house, which got me into a lot of trouble. I was probably at my height at about 12, which is when I got sort of spotted for Arsenal. And I couldn't go to London because, you know, my mum and dad were working in Wales and I was only 12. And so my mum and dad said, well, look, you know, if anyone's still interested in you to play football when you're a bit older, when you're 15 or something, then maybe. But I feel like I'd sort of peaked at that point. And my interest started then going into, I was doing school plays and I found something that I could be equally obsessed by and that sort of used up every single part of me. I remember playing football. And I'd be on the pitch and I used to be adding up the numbers on the back of everyone's football tops. You know, you've got your number on the back. And I realized it's because there was a part of my brain that just wasn't getting used somehow. It was just, so I was filling it up somehow. And I think when acting came along, I realized, oh, this uses every single bit of me. And so the obsession just sort of moved that way then.
Presenter asks
26:30Many artists dream of breaking America. Did you?
Well, it was a very strange period of time after that because I was kind of getting to do sort of whatever I wanted to do in theatre at that point back home and loving it. … I found myself ultimately in LA because myself and Kate split up, but I lived there because Lily was, you know, growing up there. So I find myself in LA kind of doing nothing. I would sit in diners reading Stephen King books, essentially, and thinking, sort of thinking about what I could be doing back at home and finding myself sort of going up and doing auditions for, you know, Cough and a Spit in the back of an Alien versus Predator movie or something and not getting it. And feeling quite demoralized, yeah. And it sort of felt like it felt like that went on for a long time.
Presenter asks
31:07How does [playing real people] work? You've said you're always playing yourself even when giving a convincing performance as someone we feel we already know.
I suppose people tend to assume that I was one of those kids who was, you know, always impersonating teachers and other friends and stuff. And I was not. I could not do that. In a way, it's good that I wasn't very good at impersonations because it made me go, well, I can't do an impersonation of this person, so I'm going to have to do something else. So it made me focus on the kind of inner life of the person and really trying to research them and work out why they sounded the way they did, why they moved the way they did, all that kind of stuff. … I always liken it to, you know, there's those fantastic things that you can watch, like behind the music, and there's someone sitting behind a mixing desk going, Hi, welcome to Behind the Music. And there's all those faders and dimmers on that massive mixing desk. Well, I sort of see me as being like that. That when I play a character, you know, I look at that mixing desk, and all those dimmers and faders are at certain levels, and that represents me. And then I have to change those dimmers and faders to be who the person is. And I'll experiment. I remix myself. That's a really good way of describing it. I basically do mashups. I do remixes. … So ultimately, yes, when I'm playing these characters, hopefully I do enough to convince people that I'm being them. But what I'm using as the raw material is me.
“He sort of died man, he just sort of made noises The interviewer it whilst a m uh a record was on leaned over and went, You are not Jack Nicholson, are you? And my dad, without a moment's hesitation, he had a playing card seller taped to his the palm of his hand that was a Joker, and then written on it was Myrick Sheen. And he just showed him and he went, Meh, Myrick Sheen, even better than the real thing.”
“I didn't even realize I was Welsh until I didn't live in Wales because I just assumed everywhere was Wales. I mean, I'd heard of other places, but I didn't really believe they existed.”
“I was absolutely exhausted, but I have a really strong memory of being on the back of the motorbike. Whizzing through central London, going past Rada. And just thinking, if someone had come up to me when I was at Radha and said, One day you will be playing Tony Blair in a drama for Stephen Frees in the day and going and playing Caligula at the Dolmar Theatre at night I mean, you can't imagine anything better. I remember thinking, Being tired is a very small price to play.”
“I remix myself. That's a really good way of describing it. I basically do mashups. I do remixes.”
“It was absolute madness, is what it was. I sort of look back on it now and can't believe that it actually happened, but I'm very glad that it did.”
“No man is an island, as I'm sure I'm not the first person who said that on this show. But we are more than social creatures. You know, the idea that we are separate is, I believe, an illusion. We are not separate.”