Mr. Beaks Hits The End-Of-Line Club With TRON LEGACY's Michael Sheen!
Published at: Dec. 21, 2010, 3:12 p.m. CST by mrbeaks
With the possible exception of Jeff Bridges and his "Zen thing", no one has more fun in TRON LEGACY than Michael Sheen. As Castor, the proprietor of the sleek and happenin' End of Line Club (where Daft Punk are the house DJs), Sheen gleefully veers from Ziggy Stardust-era David Bowie to the Master of Ceremony from CABARET to whatever personality or pop cultural reference pops into his head at any given moment. It is a scene-stealing turn by design, intended to goose the otherwise dour father-son narrative with a little rock star energy. And it works because Sheen, as ever, commits fully to the reality of the film.
As I learned when I interviewed him a couple of years ago, Sheen doesn't believe in "paycheck roles"; he thinks his characters in TRON LEGACY, UNDERWORLD and THE TWILIGHT SAGA are as deserving of his energy and considerable talents as his more critically-acclaimed performances in FROST/NIXON, THE QUEEN and THE DAMNED UNITED. In fact, as he explains in our latest back-and-forth below, he often tries to find what is "genre" in the "serious" stuff, while seeking out the more "worthy" and dramatic qualities of the genre pieces.
There are few better interviews out there than Michael Sheen: he's unfailingly convivial and seems to genuinely enjoy discussing his creative process. Though this was much briefer than our previous chat (you're lucky when you get fifteen minutes on a jam-packed press day like this), Sheen was still able to offer up some fascinating insights into what it's like to build a memorable character in a film stuffed to bursting with f/x eye candy.
When I started recording, we were discussing what a strange time it was two years ago to be promoting an Oscar frontrunner in FROST/NIXON and the third installment of the UNDERWORLD series.
Michael Sheen: That bizarre period of time! I remember a friend saying they came out of the cinema from watching UNDERWORLD [RISE OF THE LYCANS], and literally in the next screen FROST/NIXON was on. And they were telling everyone as they came out, "You can go and see him interview Nixon in there!"
Mr. Beaks: I really like your philosophy about the work. You don't approach a genre film like UNDERWORLD any differently than you would a serious dramatic piece like FROST/NIXON.
Sheen: They're all stories to me. I think the reason why people like films like FROST/NIXON, THE QUEEN and THE DAMNED UNITED is because they're entertaining stories. They seem on the surface to be very worthy and serious dramas, but they're not. I mean, they're about serious things, I guess, but they're entertaining. They draw you in. That's a part of what makes them work: they seem on the surface to be one thing, but they're actually just really great yarns. It's exactly the same thing that draws me to do a film like TRON, UNDERWORLD or TWILIGHT. It's just a good story. I like that. I like, in a way, looking for what is genre-ish about a story like FROST/NIXON or THE QUEEN, and I like looking for what is more worthy and serious and earnest in films like TRON or UNDERWORLD. What I loved about UNDERWORLD 3 was all the Christ references I was able to put into it, and the SPARTACUS stuff. I love that combination of things.
Beaks: When they came to you with TRON, did they set any parameters for you? Did they ask you to do something specific?
Sheen: When I first spoke to Joe [Kosinski] about it, he said, "We want this character to come in at a certain point, and be an absolute new kind of energy. We want him to be larger than life, a big showman character, and to really elevate the film at that point to somewhere new." I looked at a few character designs they had, and he looked like a circus ringmaster. We talked about it a little bit, and the more we talked about it, I started saying, "What if he's not just the nightclub owner? What if he performs in the club as well? What if he's a bit more like a rock star?" They talked about the emcee in CABARET a little bit, and I liked the idea of someone who actually performs there as well. I started talking about the idea, "Maybe the scene begins with him actually performing." We didn't do that in the end, but a bit of that sort of stayed in there. Then I started thinking about - because there's obviously stuff about identity in it, and shapeshifting and using one identity as a smokescreen - the idea of someone who is able to pick up identities and drop them and change ideas and play around with that. And also someone who is a human jukebox in a way; he's like a human jukebox for pop culture references. And someone who is literally a chameleon as a program. He's someone who survives through adaptation; he reinvents himself in order to survive in this treacherous world he lives in.
So all of those things, the combination of rock star, chameleon, shapeshifter, jukebox... all kind of brought me to [David] Bowie. I thought, "He's a good kind of touchstone for this character." So the look of the character started becoming influenced by that and Ziggy [Stardust]. And I thought, "Well, it's an artificial creation. Castor has invented himself for his own agenda to be going on underneath." So I thought that gives me freedom to play around with those kinds of references. I thought Bowie was a good one. He fits the bill in a lot of ways. It's not that I'm playing Bowie, it's just a good kind of reference contextually.
>Beaks: You still look and sound an awful lot like him at times. Could you do David Bowie prior to this?
Sheen: No. I'd been a fan of Bowie, but... it's funny. I've played a lot of these real people now, and people sort of see me as able to do impersonations. I can't do impersonations at all. I just watch someone and find what's kind of useful about them, and it comes out the way it comes out. I liked the younger Bowie. There was a kind of "Fuck you!" attitude. He sort of enjoys himself; there's such a cockiness about him, which I really liked. I thought that would be good to play with the character. You just watch, and certain things start to come out. It's usually more to do with a spirit or an attitude. And as I see the way they manifest that spirit... I don't try to copy what they do physically or vocally. But in trying to get that spirit, inevitably I start doing similar things, I guess. So there were a few of those things that wound up in this character. But, no, I could never do Bowie before.
Beaks: Some actors like to watch themselves in the mirror, and work on the affectations until they're perfect. Do you go in for any of that?
Sheen: Not really. I did actually with this a little, because physically, the movements... I didn't want it to look choreographed, but I wanted it to look clean. Because the whole aesthetic of the TRON world are straight lines and clean lines - geometric shapes and stuff. So I didn't want his movement to be too messy; I wanted it to be quite clean. And that worked out. Also, I was wearing these massive heels and in this incredibly elaborate costume, so if I was going to do some sort of elaborate movement work, I had to work that out beforehand in the mirror in the trailer. But in terms of the character himself, like I said I don't try to slavishly reproduce something. I'm trying to go for something that's inside really. So how that comes out doesn't really matter. It's when it feels right. It's when I go, "That's it!"
Beaks: I just talked to Jeff Bridges, and I was telling him how there were certain lines where I was like, "That's Bridges! That's how he talks in real life!" Did you contribute any dialogue to the film like that?
Sheen: With a character like that, you just have to riff on things really. Obviously, I used the script as a basis, and then I'd just play around with it myself and come out with stuff. Like I was saying about that kind of popular culture jukebox thing, that was all my own stuff. I just came up with all that. If we'd had longer, I would've gone further and further with that all the time. It would've been great to have almost everything I say be some sort of reference or quotation. It would've been quite fun. But, yeah, you have to have the freedom, when you come into a play or a film where you totally take over. It's like "Here I am!" You kind of have to feel like you've got the freedom to do whatever you want at any given moment. So I was lucky that I was given that freedom.
Beaks: Kosinski is a veteran of commercials, but this is his first actual feature. How was he as a director of actors? Was there a period of figuring out how you both work?
Sheen: He was in a difficult position, I suppose, in that he hadn't done a huge motion picture with actors, and, yet, there he is at the helm of this huge film. So he's having to be totally in command at all times. He has to look as if he's in control at all times. That's a difficult area to be in: where you can't show that you don't know what you want, and yet at the same time lacking any experience really in a certain area. So I thought he hit a really good mixture of making us as actors feel comfortable that he knew what he was doing and that he knew what he wanted, but at the same time being open to learning from us what we needed at any given point - because obviously that was a very new thing for him. I thought he struck a really good balance with that. There was a bit of... not difficult, but a little bit of "I can't really do that, Joe. I don't really work like that. I want to accommodate you, obviously, because I'm just in here for a few weeks, but I kind of need to do this." And that was great. It was easy. I thought he handled all that brilliantly. And for a film that is so technical in so many ways, it made me feel like I had complete freedom to do what I wanted - which, again, is a real trick to be able to create that. That's partly to do with me having worked on similar-ish kind of films. But it's also that you need to be allowed to do that, to feel comfortable doing that. And he really did. And [producer] Sean Bailiey as well. He was a massive influence on the film.
Beaks: To have that freedom and not get lost in the machinery or the light show.
Sheen: Yeah, exactly. Because at the end of the day, no one will thank you if it's all about the f/x. It's got to be a real story that engages people, and makes people laugh and cry and all the rest of it. And that can be difficult when there's this much technology and such amazing things to work with. It's very easy to suddenly go, "Ooh, I'm just a little person in the middle of all this." You've got to really just go out there and take it by the balls - certainly when you're given the brief I was given. You can't be scared or tentative or timid; you've just got to go out and blow it up.
Beaks: I guess it's nice to know that there's no going over the top with this character.
Sheen: Yeah, exactly. It gives you a kind of a freedom to go, "Well, I can go as far as I want with this." Because as long as I bring it back to what's really underneath it, then you can kind of have a lot of leeway.
Beaks: All directors would prefer if you give them everything. A director's job is so much easier when they've got an actor who's willing to go way over the top than someone you have to tease out.
Sheen: It's much easier to bring someone down than to get someone up. I think golfers say [about putting], "Be courageous, and be prepared to go beyond the hole." That's always stuck with me. I think that's a good acting analogy. Be prepared to go way past the hole rather than never quite get there. Because if you're too timid and too tentative, you'll never get it in. There's always a much stronger chance of you getting it in if you do it a little bit too far - and it's much easier to pull it back. I would've thought as a director it's great to be offered up all kinds of things, and you can always then play with the volume on it.
Beaks: And that goes for an emotionally reserved character as well?
Sheen: I think so, yeah. It's always about gradation, I think. It's literally about turning the volume up and down on the emotion or the intensity or whatever it is. And once you've hit the rich seam, then it's just like being in a music studio. It's just knob tweaking.
