143 Quotes by Michael Sheen

I'd love to go back to Europe in the '20s and '30s, for the beginning of the Psychoanalytic Movement, and Freud and Jung, and all that was going on with discoveries in quantum physics. The whole nature of reality was changing and being challenged.

The first job I ever did in the theatre, I was supposed to be a genius piano player. I couldn't play the piano, but you just sit there at a piano like you're playing, and suddenly all this amazing music comes out and the audience believes you can do it. It's the same with computers. I love scenes where there are people yanking at monitors, "yes I'll put you through now," and you know they're just doing that. But you can look brilliant at all this technology. I love it.

And so, in terms of setting the right tone and finding a way of presenting all of these things, that creates a cohesive whole and doesn't alienate the audience, is tough. That's a challenge. And I think the tone of a lot of shows is discovered through experimentation and actually making it. Eventually, it starts to cohere.

When you're working on something where there's usually one sex scene in the film, it all gets a little bit of a gray area and people get a bit uncomfortable and awkward. You just get through it. But, it became very clear on this that that can't happen. There can't be any gray areas on this because there are actors and actresses coming in for a day or a couple of days, as well as people who are there regularly.

So, if they're coming in and having to do scenes that involve nudity or sexuality, in some way, the utmost important thing is that everyone feels comfortable and safe. If there's any gray area, that's going to be a problem.

We knew, very early on, that we had to be very, very clear that directors need to speak to actors and actresses and be very clear about what is expected, and find out whether they're comfortable with that. Wardrobe has to be in place. There have to be checks.

Nothing can be left until the last minute, so that everyone knows exactly where they are. Everyone is comfortable and everyone feels safe because we want people to be able to keep coming into this show and taking those risks. There are a lot of risks in this show, not just nudity, but emotional risks. We want the best actors to feel comfortable about coming in and exploring this subject matter with us.

Having said that, what I think we found, in doing the show, and in life, generally, is that the more you try to separate sex from everything else, it's impossible. You can't. The act of observation affects the actual experiment, and we see that in this.

My experience of working on this show, even though there is so much about sex and sexuality, and we find out a lot of facts and statistics that are very interesting, in their own right, I found that I started talking about relationships more, and the emotions, the difficulties and the challenges. So, I became far more open about that, which I think is probably an indication with the show itself.