Welsh actor Michael Sheen has said he is worried about how tough it has become for young people who are getting into acting.
At the Edinburgh TV Festival, in conversation with TV producer and chief executive of Bad Wolf, Jane Tranter, he spoke about what it was like to attend youth theatre in Port Talbot and said a lot of the opportunities he had as a young person “have gone”.
He said: “It is quite scary. I look back on my pathway of coming through, starting with a supportive family, coming from an area, you know it was old steel town and, sort of tough place to grow up in, not the sort of place you’d expect actors to come from but because we had Richard Burton that came from there and Anthony Hopkins …
“I again, one of the things I’ve realised as time has gone on is how important it is to see where you come from, represented on the world stage, and to know that it’s possible.
“I never questioned whether you could be successful as an actor, because Burton and Hopkins were and they came from this town.”
He said: “It does worry me that, for young people who might want to get into this, if you are relying on the bank of mum and dad or… it’s really tough to even just to go and move to London, or move to wherever these places are.
“That’s why it’s so important to get stuff out of London and around the country.”
Earlier in the year, Sheen launched a theatre company called Welsh National Theatre, which is envisioned as separate from but complementary to Theatr Cymru, which was established in 2003 as the Welsh language national company.
National Theatre Wales closed its doors in its current form as a theatre company in December 2024, after funding was withdrawn in 2023.
On TV, Sheen has starred in series including US period drama Masters Of Sex, sitcom 30 Rock, and fantasy show Good Omens, alongside David Tennant.
He has portrayed a number of real-life public figures including former prime minister Sir Tony Blair in 2006 film The Queen, journalist David Frost in 2008’s Frost/Nixon, and the Duke of York in Prime Video mini-series A Very Royal Scandal.
On stage he has played Welsh Labour Party politician Aneurin “Nye” Bevan in the show Nye, which recently finished at the National Theatre.
