“It’s not charity work. I’m not doing this as some sort of Welsh saviour”
Topping The Stage 100 after a career journey from Port Talbot to the West End and Hollywood, Michael Sheen has returned to his native Wales on a mission, as the founder and artistic director of the Welsh National Theatre. He tells Nicholas Davies why this is his most crucial work yet
For someone whose career has garnered more than its share of accolades, Michael Sheen seems genuinely pleased at topping The Stage 100 for 2026. “It means a huge amount to me,” he says proudly, “because it’s not just a reflection of what I’m doing, or this company, but a recognition of the whole of the Welsh arts at a time when we’re not getting the support and the recognition from within our country, in terms of the government. So, to get this recognition from the industry is massively important.”
It is typical of Sheen that, even in a moment of satisfaction, he is still political. He is an activist as much as an actor. And, now, also artistic director of a national theatre company. His new Welsh National Theatre opens its first full-scale production this month, heralding a new era for English-language theatre in Wales.
We meet in Swansea on a gloriously crisp, bright winter’s morning, in an office overlooking a sea so sparkling we need to squint to look at it. The last time I saw Sheen in this neck of the woods, he was the Christ-like figure being crucified on a grassy roundabout just across the bay from where we are now, the culmination of the extraordinary The Passion,stagedin the town of Port Talbot in 2011. He has since described that particular project, in his home town, as his proudest achievement. It was an event of such scale and feeling that Lyn Gardner was moved to write that, for a few days, “Port Talbot was one of the happiest places on Earth”. In 2026, Sheen may just surpass that.
Though his career has taken him to London and America, this area has always been Sheen’s home, where a landscape born of steel and coal rolls into the sea. Swansea Council has provided the WNT with office space in its Civic Centre – a monument of 1980s municipal brutalism – rent-free for two years. There is something charmingly unpretentious about a theatre company wedged between births, deaths and marriages and the local archives. When I visit, some familiar theatremakers hang out in the sparse, carpeted corridor, laptops primed on salvaged office desks.
For Sheen, something very special resonates in these walls. “My life was changed by West Glamorgan Youth Theatre when I was 13 or 14,” he recalls. “There was a youth arts infrastructure that was unparalleled. A man called Godfrey Evans was the architect of all that – creating a youth theatre, dance company and orchestra – and Godfrey worked out of this building. There is a significance in that for me, for what he did and how he created pathways for people, including myself. To be here, there’s a ‘coming home’ of those values and beliefs and that ethos, and I’ve tried to bring them to what we’re doing.”
Aspiration and connectivity
Sheen is open and good-humoured, but also direct. As we set up for the interview, I joke that I hope it will not feel too much like Frost/Nixon, which prompts a brief chat about David Frost’s amateur football career, before an invitation from Sheen for me to ask him challenging questions.
So, after the demise of the previous National Theatre Wales that created work in the English language (Theatr Cymru successfully continues as the Welsh-language equivalent), why has he set up the WNT? Why not choose to create an independent ‘Michael Sheen Theatre Company’ that can simply do the work he wants to do without the weight of civic responsibility?
“Part of calling it the Welsh National Theatre rather than, say, the Michael Sheen Company – even though I would never call it that! – is what comes with that ‘national’ name, with that aspiration,” he explains. “And I think it is an aspiration more than a claim at the moment. And it’s all about connectivity.”
He cites a recent visit to smaller theatres in mainly rural West Wales, where venue managers were stunned that he would come their way. He wants those theatres and other similar institutions to benefit from a strengthened infrastructure. “All my desires for this company, all my aspirations for it, are about what it can do generally speaking, which is about connecting up, and creating pathways and opportunities for people. Looking back at the opportunities I was given right here, I want to take it even further.”
Forging a new national theatre
Since first announcing the WNT, it has been a whirlwind year for Sheen and his newly assembled team. When we speak, Matthew Rhys is touring a one-man drama, Playing Burton, across Wales as a fundraiser for the company – including to some of those rural venues Sheen recently visited. And an ambitious version of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town is about to begin rehearsals, directed by Francesca Goodridge. It opens at the Swansea Grand on 16th January before touring. Most new companies take time to establish themselves, especially at a national level, where there is a propensity for politicking and endless consultation, finding the lay of the land before anything hits a stage.
So, why the hurry? “It just felt like there was a tiny window of opportunity to get something going again,” Sheen tells me. “If we left it too long, we might never get [an English-language national company] back again. So, my attitude was that whatever the rights and wrongs are, let’s get one again, and we can discuss everything later. But let’s not miss this window.”
He acknowledges that his success as an actor, a powerhouse of stage and screen in Britain and the US, and the subsequent financial reward that comes with that, enabled him to facilitate change in a way few others could, or would, especially when arts funding in Wales is at such a desperate point. A recent report placed the nation second from bottom in Europe in terms of arts funding per head. “I just felt: there’s no money, so I’ll pay for whatever needs to happen to begin with, just to get the ball rolling, and get some productions up and running. The hardest bit of it is to get it happening in the first place.”
Sheen will star in Our Town, then later in the year he will play revolutionary leader Owain Glyndŵr in the medieval epic Owain & Henry. The latter, Gary Owen’s bold vision of the conflict between the last Welsh Prince of Wales and Henry IV, was one of the catalysts for founding the new company. Sheen was rehearsing Nye with the National Theatre in England when news hit that NTW would close down in its current form. He listened in on conversations without becoming deeply involved, due to the demands of preparing for his role as politician Aneurin Bevan.
But when Nye moved to the Wales Millennium Centre, and local audiences responded in such numbers and enthusiasm (at the time, I described it as a genuine cultural moment, such was the public’s relish at seeing one of its own historical heroes represented with so much craft and humanity), Sheen realised there was an appetite for big stories on stage, if only there existed a company with the budget to create them.
This was also when he read a copy of Owain & Henry. “The problem was that people weren’t writing plays of that scale because there was no chance of them getting produced,” he says. “But Gary’s early draft was incredibly exciting to read, so the idea of doing his play on the Wales Millennium Centre stage with this new company all clicked. The vision of the company coalesced around Gary’s play.”
Sheen had to pitch the idea of an English-language national theatre to the Arts Council of Wales straight after it had switched off the life support on another such company. “It was an emergency situation at the beginning,” he remembers. “And still is now, even though we’re starting to get more support financially from various places. But it was an unusual situation for the Arts Council of Wales to have someone in front of them saying: ‘I can pay for this myself, but I think it would be useful if you were a part of it. It’s probably good for Wales if we work on this together.’ ”
Criticism and optimism
In such challenging times financially, could it be counter-intuitive to mount shows of such grand ambition? “What we’re doing with this company is so against the current of what’s going on. We’re saying it’s not about having crumbs or cutting back, it’s about going further, going bigger and more ambitious and bolder. Put a flag in the ground and see who comes and rallies.”
But what about the inevitable kickback, especially with that potentially provocative ‘national’ title? “That argument that a national theatre is taking funding away from really important work that’s going on elsewhere in Wales – I’m aware of that,” he says. “I don’t want to stop other companies from thriving, but I make no apologies that I think this is important and needed. But I’m very aware of wanting to try to think about the whole sector and not just what we’re trying to do.”
He expects, and even welcomes, criticism. “You have to deal with the reality of it. It’s one thing when it’s a hope and a vision, but people will come up and say: ‘Why are you doing that? That’s rubbish,’” he tells me. “But that’s great, it’s good that’s the conversation. It’s part of why we have to establish a canon of Welsh plays so that people can slag it off and say: ‘No, that shouldn’t be it, it should be this’, because then you’ve got something alive, living and aspirational.”
Conversation returns to Sheen’s The Passion in Port Talbot, which was staged almost 15 years ago now. It was part of the old National Theatre Wales’ opening season, a time of sunny optimism for the sector in Wales. Sheen acknowledges that NTW’s site-specific approach was initially successful but, ultimately, offered diminishing returns in terms of audience interest. He wants to plough a different furrow this time: “I knew we should do the opposite of where we were before, so we should do a big, popular, accessible, entertaining play that will attract a big audience in a big theatre. One [theatrical style] isn’t better than the other, but it will be a sort of palate cleanser, to show this is different.”
But how will Sheen ensure good feeling does not dissipate as rapidly as it did for the NTW? His star power will certainly help draw audiences – box office takings for Our Town and Owain & Henry are already exceeding expectations – but it cannot sustain a company forever. “I will be involved for as long as I need to be involved in it,” he asserts. “But every decision has to be thinking beyond my time here. I don’t know how long I’ll be doing it for, but I’ll always be involved in it, just in what capacity. It has to be sustainable beyond my time in it.”
Growing Welsh theatre’s footprint
When pressed on how long he sees himself heading the company, he understandably bristles: “I don’t see this as a stepping stone. This is it! It’s not charity work. I’m not doing this as some sort of Welsh saviour.”
He is at pains to emphasise that WNT is not an extension of his well-known philanthropy, even if he is using his own money and time to bring it to life. It is the company’s creative potential that fuels him: “This is about immense possibility, a vision, and trying to make that a reality. I in no way think of what we’re doing here as coming in and ‘helping people’ – it’s putting everything I believe in into practice in my own country. And that’s really exciting. This is a privilege for me. I get to try to make a reality things I’ve wanted to address for a long time.”
As well as the main-stage shows, he is energised by what WNT might do for the wider theatrical community. “I’m really excited about the possibilities of what we’re exploring right now with our Studio project, where people from all over Wales can come, a place where actors, directors and designers can try things out and spark off each other. It’s about using this company as an engine for the whole country.”
Perhaps heading up The Stage 100 suggests that Sheen and WNT’s influence might even extend beyond Wales. He smiles: “In a way, it’s a measure of our own internalised inferiority complex, because the thing that really hit me was how extraordinary it is that Welsh theatre could be seen as being as influential as that. That’s such a fantastic boost.”
Q&A: Michael Sheen
What was your first non-theatre job? A paper round. I was the worst paperboy in the world. People used to come knocking on our door asking for their newspapers on the weekend, and I’d still be in bed. My mum had to go and do the round for me!
What was your first professional theatre job? When She Danced in the West End with Vanessa Redgrave.
What do you wish someone had told you when you were starting out? It’s funny because of course if someone told you the thing that you wish someone had told you, you wouldn’t have listened! The thing I say to people starting out now is that it’s really hard but try not to compare yourself to other people. Everyone’s path is different. If you’re making choices based on answering your own instincts, then it does add up, and you’ll have created a pathway.
Who or what is your biggest influence? Godfrey Evans. My life and career wouldn’t be what I’ve had if it wasn’t for him. The first actor that inspired me was Laurence Olivier, even though I never saw him perform live, but I read about his performances from Kenneth Tynan. I think I’m the only actor who was mainly inspired to become an actor by a critic! And, of course, underpinning all that is, always, my parents.
What is your best advice for auditions? People don’t get into a room anymore, it’s all self-tapes. So, the advice is not for the people who are auditioning, but for the people who are holding the auditions: get in the fucking room with people!
If you hadn’t been an actor, what would you have been? When I was a very young teen, I remember thinking: ‘Wouldn’t it be great to spend all day thinking up adverts?’ I was just attracted to coming up with ideas… I would have loved to have been a footballer as well, a path that was open to me at one point. Ultimately, I can’t imagine doing anything else. I certainly wouldn’t be a paperboy.
Do you have any theatrical superstitions or rituals? I like things being the same in the build-up to a performance. But I don’t like that that’s the case, so I try to break it, so it doesn’t get too entrenched.
