At the LA press day for the Sony Pictures Classics film, Sheen said he wasn't necessarily trying to imitate Clough, rather he was looking to capture the spirit of the fiery man. Sheen, who's tackled such famous figures as Tony Blair and David Frost, wasn't an expert on all things Clough before becoming involved in The Damned United.
"The events of the film, when he was at Leeds in 1974, I was five so I don’t remember that. But he went on, his greatest achievements were after this," said Sheen. "He founded a team called Nottingham Forest. They were in the bottom of the second division or something and he took them not only to the top of the first division but into Europe and they won the European Cup twice, two years in a row. So what he achieved there, with Peter Taylor again, was unprecedented and never done again. So I remember that. That’s what I kind of grew up with. And I suppose also the later Clough where towards the end of his time in Nottingham Forest, as the alcohol took its grip on him more and more, he became more ravaged and bloated looking and he became in some ways quite a tragic figure because he and Taylor argued again, split up, they never made it up. Taylor died, Clough never forgave himself I think for never making things up with Taylor and he just got more and more kind of in the grip of it."
Sheen's obviously no stranger to playing historical characters, and he said his process of getting into the role is always the same in terms of the work he does beforehand. "I'll start with just watching the person, and I’ll find one book and I’ll start reading through one book. I don't know whether it’s a good book or not. I’ll just find a book about him because you’ve got to start somewhere, and then I’ll start watching footage. There’s a team of researchers who put together all the footage for me and find all the stuff. Then I slowly start working my way through everything that exists about the person. Eventually I’ll find there’ll be one book that I find really useful, and there’ll be certain bits of footage that I find for some reason I connect with. I might not even know why I connect with it to begin with - and I might only find that out by the end - but something will kind of speak to me about it. I’ll sort of compile all that and then that becomes my kind of talisman in research that I’ll just go back over that, and over that and over that over and over again," explained Sheen.
"With Brian, I suppose what I found was that for a man who was famous in Britain for being the epitome of arrogance and self-confidence and self-belief, the thing that surprised me was how little self-confidence he actually had, how little self-belief, how much he had to achieve things in order to boost up his feeling of self-belief, self-esteem. Anyone who’s that driven to achieve and to win and to be the best, I think feels like they have to make up for something. There’s some sort of never-ending hunger for something that can never be fulfilled. I think with Brian it was the fact that he was stopped from doing what he wanted to do when he was a younger man. He was a player and that was his dream, and that dream was cut short. I think for anyone... You look at people who get in accidents, in car accidents or motorbike accidents when they are young and they’re not able to do what they want to do. There’s a whole psychological thing that you have to go through to accept that I suppose, and I don't think he ever really accepted that. So there was always this kind of frustrated resentment in him. That whole disguise, that mask was covering that up and underneath that was a lot of vulnerability and insecurity and anxiety and wanting to be told, 'You’re the best. You’re the best.' Rather than him being able to just go, 'I am the best.' He didn’t have the confidence to do that so I suppose that was the revelation, for a man who was supposedly one thing to kind of use that and then discover something underneath."
You don't have to be a football fan to get into The Damned United - it's more of a character study than a sports movie - but Sheen was a big football fan in his younger days. "When I was a kid, that was all I cared about was football. All I wanted to do was be a football player. When I was a kid, if I wasn’t at school, I’d be playing football in the street or in the football field next to me. Even when I was at school, every time there was a break, I’d be playing football and talking about it and getting football stickers and filling up albums and all that kind of stuff. Then when I was 12, I got offered the possibility of going to play for Arsenal, the youth team," revealed Sheen. "I lived in a small town in Wales and it would’ve meant my whole family having to go and live in London so my dad said, 'No. If you’re still interested when you’re 16, then you can go then.' But it’s too late when you’re 16. You have to go when you’re much younger. And also I was into other thing by then, like girls, drinking and acting."
