Three-time BAFTA nominee
Michael Sheen has gained a prominent place among the talented new generation of
British actors, on stage and screen. He earned a BAFTA nod as Best Supporting
Actor in "The Queen" for his portrayal of Tony Blair opposite Helen Mirren's
Queen, and garnered two more for Best Actor in the television dramas Kenneth
Williams:"Fantabulosa!" and "Dirty Filthy Love." "The Queen" also brought him
the Los Angeles Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Last year, in addition to starring as Prime Minister Tony Blair in Stephen
Frears' "The Queen," he appeared in Edward Zwick's "Blood Diamond," opposite
Leonardo DiCaprio and Djimon Hounsou. "The Queen" marked Sheen's third
collaboration with Frears. He first played the British Prime Minister in Frears'
television feature "The Deal" and made his feature film debut in the director's
"Mary Reilly," playing Dr. Jekyll's footman. Sheen's other feature film credits
include Ridley Scott's "Kingdom of Heaven," "Laws of Attraction" starring Pierce
Brosnan and Julianne Moore, Stephen Fry's "Bright Young Things," "Underworld,"
Shekhar Kapur's "The Four Feathers" and "Wilde" with Stephen Fry and Jude Law.
Trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, in his second year Sheen
won the coveted Laurence Olivier Bursary for consistently outstanding
performances. While still a student at RADA, Sheen landed a starring role
opposite Vanessa Redgrave in 1991's "When She Danced," which marked his West End
debut. Sheen has since earned Olivier Award nominations for his work in
"Amadeus," "Look Back in Anger," and "Caligula," for which he also won a London
Critics Circle Award and the London Evening Standard Award. He has also received
acclaim for his performances in such plays as "Romeo and Juliet," "Peer Gynt"
and "Henry V." In 1999, Sheen made his Broadway debut, reprising the title role
in the revival of Peter Hall's "Amadeus."
On stage, Sheen recently starred on Broadway in the hit "Frost/Nixon," in which
he played David Frost to Frank Langella's Nixon, which was written by Peter
Morgan ("The Queen"). This followed the sold-out run in London, where Sheen
received nominations for Best Actor from both the Olivier Awards and Evening
Standard Awards. The play centers around Frost and the disgraced former
president accepting his lucrative offer in 1977 to participate in a series of
television interviews about the events that led Nixon to resign. Sheen recently
completed the film version of "Frost/Nixon," from Morgan's screen adaptation of
his play that is directed by Ron Howard.