"Get it done..." Michael Sheen on his father’s last advice
The acclaimed actor on losing his father, why life is all about love and how his outlook has become increasingly simple.
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The acclaimed actor on losing his father, why life is all about love and how his outlook has become increasingly simple.
Well, I will get quite choked up here, but the last words [my father] said to me before he died were: "Get it done, Michael. Get it done."
Best advice you can have. I’m someone who comes up with lots of ideas, whether it’s to do with theatre, film or TV or stuff to do with community. You can start things, but unless you get them finished, it doesn’t matter.
So I would say my dad saved the best advice till last.
Yeah, he did. We’d argue constantly about all kinds of things. For a while, I was quite reluctant to see the similarities between us.
Part of the ageing process, for me at least, was coming more and more willingly to accept rather than deny them. But he was definitely someone who liked to help people, and he liked to get things done, so I can see how similar we are.
Oh God, yeah. Most of the people reading this will have gone through the experience of losing a parent.
All you can hope for is that they’re surrounded by love and care, respect and dignity. I’m incredibly grateful that my father was able to go through that process being cared for properly.
A Wales Millennium Centre and Welsh National Theatre co-production, is at the Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff, from 5-28 November
When I think about all the most difficult days in my life, they’re usually about the people you love the most going through something really difficult, and you not being able to do as much to help them as you would like.
That’s why ultimately my motto for life, or my ethos, has increasingly become about how we must do what we can, with what we’ve got, to help others when they need it.
Doesn’t matter who you are or how much money you have, at some point, you will need help. In those moments, it becomes very clear what to be human is, which is this: for no personal gain, someone will come and help you when you need it. The NHS is an embodiment of that.
Everything that is worthwhile that we have ever come up with as a species reflects this idea in some way. When there’s no reason, ultimately, for somebody else to help you, they just do.
As I get older, I can see that the things I say become simpler, and my advice is that life is all about love.
That is something my 20-year-old self would have scoffed at and thought of as a cliché. It hits different when you’re over 50.
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