Michael Sheen seems to be everywhere on our film posters... performing the most challenging task for an actor: playing living people.

He brought Tony Blair remarkably to life in The Queen opposite Helen Mirren in the title role; then came David Frost in Frost/Nixon, and now he is Brian Clough in The Damned United.

Yet at the start of his career, shortly after he left RADA, he spent quite some time in the Naxos AudioBooks studio, showing that even in his mid-twenties, he had a truly remarkable talent for the world of audiobooks.

Even his first directing experience was for Naxos AudioBooks.

It was in our first year that Michael was recommended to me. Laura Paton, herself just out of LAMDA, and a key reader for us, mentioned Michael to me, and I invited him to come and read Crime and Punishment – he was so clearly the kind of young actor who could understand the predicament of Raskolnikov.

He had never read an audiobook before, but he was a natural, in most ways.

We had set up the studio in the normal way, with a table, chair, mike stand etc. He breezed in and said he wanted to do it standing up. It was a long-ish abridgement, I said, cautiously... it would take the whole day.

That was fine, he responded, with youthful brio.

So we put the table and chair to one side, and put the mike on a fully extended stand in the middle of the studio.

And he gave a truly remarkable performance, full of urgency and sympathy, and with an instinctive understanding for the different approaches needed when being a narrator and when being a character.

But he was quite tired at the end of the day.

Some months later, I invited him back to do another Dostoyevsky, The Idiot. He agreed immediately, though he was beginning to get very busy.

We set up the studio with the standing mike in the middle of the room.

He breezed in again, just having got off a transatlantic flight, but with no sense of fatigue. When he saw the set-up, he did say:

‘Ah yes, I remember. Could I sit down please...?’

‘I just can’t do
these one after
another like a
shopping list.
I’ll come back
tomorrow.’

After The Idiot – and it was an exceptionally mature reading of a complex novel – came other recordings – so that now I am pleased to say that we have the largest Michael Sheen audiobook catalogue.

And what a range!

He was the Vicomte de Valmont in Dangerous Liaisons, Lord Darlington in Lady Windermere’s Fan; and he made his directorial debut in a stunning production of Romeo and Juliet, with himself in the title role with Kate Beckinsale as Juliet and Fiona Shaw as an unforgettable nurse. Michael cast it himself and directed with clarity and confidence.

In a totally different role, but no less powerful, he portrayed one of the most tortured of characters in world drama, the title role of Sophocles’ Oedipus.

It is only too easy to forget, with his current international film star status, that he is one of the finest of readers of English poetry. In Great Poets of the Romantic Age, he reads many of the finest poems of the era – Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth – and even The Rime of the Ancient Mariner!

An unusual collection of more plush romantic verse with music, A Lover’s Gift – from him to her – was given backbone by his outstanding performance, supported by well-chosen music by Sarah Butcher.

And he played a key part in one of Naxos AudioBooks’s most successful poetry collections, Poets of the Great War, reading poems by Wilfred Owen among others.

Add to all this selections from The Old Testament (including The Song of Solomon) and an abridged version (alas! why didn’t I ask him to do it unabridged!!??) of The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Just a couple of years ago, he broke from his busy film schedule to read some Stories from Shakespeare, the junior collection written by David Timson. Michael introduces Romeo and Juliet of course, but also Richard III, King Lear and Othello among others.

Always well-prepared, always alert, always able to change tack and take a different point of view... he is the consummate actor. And despite the Hollywood aura, an actor of integrity.

On the day of the recording of Great Poets of the Romantic Age, he started with Keats, and worked through Wordsworth, and then began the section on Shelley.

Suddenly, he stopped. I remember it so clearly.

‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘I can’t do this today... I just can’t do these one after another like a shopping list. I’ll come back tomorrow.’

He wasn’t being a prima donna – he had given so much in those early poems and declined to do just ‘a professional job’ on the rest, and ESPECIALLY Shelley. I accepted it instantly.

He was back the next day... and as a result, it is one of the finest collections on Naxos AudioBooks.

Free Michael Sheen Downloads

Tintern Abbey, by William Wordsworth (9 mins, 3.2 MB, MP3)

To a Skylark, by Percy Bysshe Shelley (4 mins, 1.6 MB, MP3)

Crime and Punishment (opening), by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (7 mins, 2.4 MB, MP3)

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