Fat and Happy

Michael Sheen is currently starring in Heartlands, Irish director Damien O'Donnell's follow up to East is East. His character, Colin, is cheated on by his wife and ridiculed by his pals before taking off North along a road to nowhere. Sheen spoke to Joe Griffin about his work on the film on the morning after its world premiere at the recent DIFF. [Extract]

JG: Last night's screening was the first with a public audience. Was it a relief?

MS: It was fantastic. It's one thing to watch it on a video screen or something, but to actually sit there with an audience, and with a really warm audience like it was last night - I don't know if that's more to do with Damien's being a local boy or something - but it was so lovely to sit there and hear people laughing and hearing a few sniffles at the sad bits and all that kind of stuff... And then at the end when me and Damien came down to the front for the Q and A everyone was so warm about it. It was a really lovely experience. It was great to see it with an audience, yeah.

JG: Obviously you had to put on weight for the role. How did you maintain the same extra amount of weight for the whole shoot?

MS: Well I couldn't! Because I got fatter and fatter as the film went on! And the wardrobe department had to tell me: "Stop! You are now too fat. The costumes won't fit you." And in fact one day for a joke they took in my trousers so that they were a lot thinner than they would be usually. So I tried to put these trousers on and I couldn't get 'em on! They were trying to scare me into not putting any more weight on! So it was tough, but not as tough as it was to lose the weight again afterwards. That was the really hard bit.

The full article is printed in Film Ireland 92