Michael Sheen walks right into a submit workplace in Port Talbot and asks to withdraw £100,000. “That might be good,” says the younger lady behind the until. Then it dawns on her that he’s not joking. “Can I do £100,000?” she asks her colleague. She can’t.
“I liked that a lot. She was actually humorous,” says Sheen. Filmed for a brand new Channel 4 documentary, Michael Sheen’s Secret Million Pound Giveaway, this was a part of the actor’s two-year mission to make use of £100,000 of his personal cash to purchase £1m price of debt, owed by about 900 folks in south Wales – and instantly cancel it.
He doesn’t know who they’re (knowledge safety stopped that), however he hopes that the programme will alert those that hadn’t realised their money owed had been cancelled (the individuals who might need been ignoring the scary letters that come via the door), in addition to shine a light-weight into the darkish corners of high-cost credit score, and what occurs when money owed are bought on to collectors.
It feels extra well timed than ever, in a price of residing disaster the place 20 million persons are financially susceptible – however that is an space Sheen, 56, has been engaged on since 2018, when he arrange the Finish Excessive Value Credit score Alliance. He took an interest when he was nonetheless residing in Los Angeles in 2016, and watched John Oliver’s Final Week Tonight present spend about $60,000 to purchase up $15m price of medical debt and wipe it. Questioning if he might do one thing comparable, he discovered it was tougher within the UK, however by then he was hooked – appalled on the means the poorest folks have been pressured to make use of high-interest credit score that had turn out to be unimaginable to repay. Or, worse, have been turning to mortgage sharks.
It’s not the jazziest of causes, Sheen agrees. There’s a bit within the present the place he gathers folks in a Port Talbot cafe and divulges the “heist”, as he calls it, attempting to inject a little bit of drama right into a speech that additionally incorporates the phrases “the patron credit score business” and “the Honest Banking Act”. However the problem affected him. “I feel it’s like the whole lot that I reply to,” he says once we meet in a studio the place he’s doing the ultimate bits of filming. “It’s that there’s only a primary unfairness.”
In 2021, Sheen declared himself a not-for-profit actor – a little bit of a throwaway line, however one based mostly on his conviction that he had a duty to place as a lot of his earnings as he might in the direction of causes and tasks. A lot of that centres round his local people: in Port Talbot, the place the final of the steelworks’ blast furnaces just lately shut, persons are struggling, and in south Wales, 30% of youngsters dwell in poverty.
Sheen traces his change in focus to a decade earlier, when he staged his model of The Ardour, the three-day epic, in Port Talbot. Working with 1,000 native folks introduced him into contact with many neighborhood organisations. “I used to be studying about what was happening that I used to be completely unaware of, rising up,” he says. (He was born in Newport however moved to Port Talbot along with his household when he was eight.) He realised that it was “partly since you form of didn’t wish to know”.
It was painful to study, as an illustration, in regards to the city’s younger carers – youngsters who have been taking care of ailing or disabled dad and mom – and to see that among the many few bits of help accessible was a small organisation that took them bowling or to the cinema as soon as per week. One other lady who had misplaced her son, a schoolfriend of Sheen’s, had arrange a small grief counselling organisation to fill a spot. “After which, a few months later, I come again and the cash’s gone, that’s minimize. It began making me not solely turn out to be conscious of what folks have been doing, but in addition conscious of how underfunded it was. After which it made me ask the query, ‘Effectively, why is that?’”
He would love to have the ability to declare, he says with a smile, that the Nineteen Eighties miners’ strike in Port Talbot when he was a teen have been his political awakening. However “I can barely bear in mind it, as a result of I used to be in my full obsession with performing and youth theatre. That’s all I considered.” His mom was a secretary, and his father labored his means from the manufacturing facility flooring to center administration on the steelworks. “I all the time felt like we have been doing all proper, however on reflection we have been barely getting by.” Not that he gave it a lot thought, however he thought of his household center class – till he acquired to London, to review at Rada.
Sheen’s 20s and 30s have been about constructing his profession: big acclaim within the theatre, then in movies equivalent to Frost/Nixon. He grew to become recognized for inhabiting numerous real-life characters, from Tony Blair, twice (in The Deal, then within the 2006 movie The Queen), to Brian Clough (in The Damned United in 2009). He was in a little bit of a Hollywood bubble, residing in Los Angeles the place his daughter, from his former relationship with the actor Kate Beckinsale, was rising up. Then got here The Ardour, which introduced him again in contact along with his roots. Sheen was at a degree the place his profession had introduced him respect and a level of wealth. “I wasn’t simply desperately attempting to get on and set up myself,” he says. “I used to be capable of look out a bit extra.”
There have been different flashpoints. Visiting a refugee camp with Unicef, he watched a hungry little one choose grains of rice out of caked mud; feeling wretched, Sheen requested how quickly he might get cash from his checking account to that particular little one, and was advised it didn’t actually work like that. It had a profound impact. “I bear in mind making a form of a take care of myself and saying …” His voice breaks and his eyes effectively up. “I’m not going to get cash to that child, however I might solely not try this if I’m then going to do one thing else. Going, ‘Proper, I can see that there’s a means of strolling away from right here, going house, again to your life, and nobody’s going guilty you. However you’re not going to try this.’”
Being wilfully blinkered wouldn’t essentially have been the straightforward possibility. “I suppose that’s how you find yourself consuming your self from the within. So no, I’d say that is the better factor.”
When he moved again to Port Talbot, considered one of his tasks was the 2019 Homeless World Cup; Sheen led Cardiff’s bid to host the annual event, bringing collectively 500 gamers from 50 nations, all of whom had skilled homelessness. When the funding fell via, he ended up promoting his homes in Los Angeles and Wales to pay for it. “At first, I assumed it was the top of the whole lot. I imply, I had nothing left. Not simply that, I used to be in huge debt – I’m nonetheless paying it off.” It was horrifying he says; his accomplice, the actor Anna Lundberg, was pregnant with the primary of their two daughters. She was on board, he says. “Anybody would have been of their rights to go, ‘Sorry, I didn’t join this.’ It might have gone both means, however I’m very glad that it went the best way it did. I simply couldn’t have gotten via that with out her.”
He realised that, financially, the whole lot he had constructed up had gone. “However there was one thing very liberating about that as effectively, however solely as a result of I realised that I had a help, a security internet.” He was in demand as an actor, with good incomes energy. And the way a lot cash did he actually need anyway?
Nonetheless, he would take a look at different actors who had had comparable careers to him, “and I take a look at what they’ve acquired, and I haven’t acquired that. However I made a alternative, and I’m very proud of the selection I made.” He survived dropping his cash. “I realized lots from it – about myself and about what issues to me – and I realized that that’s not the top of the story. For me, it was form of the start of the story.”
There have been sudden penalties. I’m wondering if residing in Port Talbot reasonably than Hollywood, and never hoarding astronomical wealth, has helped Sheen’s work. To not overstate his normality – he’s nonetheless feted, does glitzy occasions, and will get to work on large Amazon Prime exhibits such because the forthcoming remaining season of Good Omens – however certainly listening to tales of individuals’s struggles, and seeing the very actual results of poverty in his neighborhood, should have an effect on his work? It has, he says, “given me a special form of emotional connection to what I do. I discover myself extra emotionally accessible in my work than I used to be perhaps once I was youthful. So, utterly selfishly, it’s made me a greater actor as effectively – however that wasn’t one thing that was acutely aware.”
The opposite impact, he says, is feeling much less powerless. “I feel one of the vital harmful issues about the best way we dwell now’s that we’re consistently surrounded by injustice or a way of issues that aren’t proper, and but feeling like we are able to’t do something about it. I’ve realized that by partaking in no matter means it’s, it not less than lets you really feel such as you’re doing one thing.”
It highlighted to Sheen that as a result of he had the potential to earn lots, his debt got here with manageable rates of interest – one thing that wasn’t accessible to family and friends fighting high-cost loans and credit score. Within the documentary, he meets a lady who runs a neighborhood fitness center and had used a bank card to cowl primary wants, however the curiosity meant she might barely make a dent within the repayments. Sheen hopes the movie will break down among the myths, “that someway, with individuals who get into bother with debt, it’s as a result of they’re making extravagant selections that they will’t afford. By speaking to people who find themselves working, perhaps working two jobs – these are people who find themselves extremely resourceful, extremely resilient. They’re not happening extravagant holidays or something like that. It’s simply primary.”
“The system doesn’t work any extra,” he says. “However folks discover it simpler to think about the top of the world than one thing that’s a reputable various to capitalism. I feel folks actually really feel there’s one thing intrinsically fallacious and flawed with the system, and recognise that it wants radical change, however the one people who find themselves providing radical change are people who find themselves harmful. And there’s no good finish to that.”
He is aware of his “heist” is attention-grabbing, “and likewise hopefully helps the 900 or nonetheless many individuals that we’ve really been capable of eliminate among the debt. Nevertheless it’s additionally about: how do you create change and do one thing that may assist hundreds or hundreds of thousands of individuals?” The Honest Banking Act is one answer, which might basically encourage banks to supply inexpensive credit score to folks beforehand excluded based mostly on their revenue, background or the place they dwell.
Placing up his personal cash, Sheen says, is necessary. “It exhibits that you simply’re critical about what you’re doing, but it surely additionally encourages different folks to take that step.” It’s the identical, he says, in relation to being so public about it. “I’ve heard folks say, ‘He can’t be that selfless, as a result of he’s letting everybody know he’s doing it.’ That’s one thing I had to consider, and I made a acutely aware alternative.” He is aware of he can supply his profile and money, bringing consideration to points. “I by no means really feel prefer it’s about me – primarily it’s about working with different folks or highlighting what they do. I’m not doing it as a result of I need folks to suppose I’m nice; I need us to have the ability to think about a substitute for this, as a result of this doesn’t work.
“And in my very own little means, I’m attempting to create my very own various. It doesn’t should be the best way it’s.”
Michael Sheen’s Secret Million Pound Giveaway is on the market to look at and stream on Channel 4 from 9pm on 10 March.
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