Woody Allen's romantic comedy Midnight in Paris is set in the City of Light and stars Owen Wilson as a Hollywood screenwriter/frustrated novelist engaged to Inez (Rachel McAdams), an obnoxious woman who doesn't truly support his dream of writing a novel. On a trip to Paris with Inez' parents, Gil gets absorbed in working on his novel and in spending time with a gorgeous stranger named Adriana (played by Marion Cotillard). Meanwhile, Inez spends her free time in the company of Paul (Michael Sheen), an egotistical know-it-all.
"Michael had to do the pseudo-intellectual, the genuine intellectual, the pedant, and he came in and nailed it from the start," stated Allen. And at the LA press day for the Sony Pictures Classics film, Sheen talked about getting into his character and the thrill of being a part of a Woody Allen movie.
On appearing in a Woody Allen film:
Michael Sheen: "It's one of the great opportunities of my career, absolutely, to work with someone who is a living legend really, and who has kind of documented certainly middle-class modern life and a certain kind of echelon of society probably better than anyone else, I think, through film. The combination of how prolific he is as a filmmaker and how kind of honest he is, in a way - every film is sort of about him - he lays himself quite bare in these films. It's an extraordinarily honest, candid look at what life is actually like for a lot of people. I don't think that's necessarily what he was setting out to do. When you look at the work, it's certainly an extraordinary documentation of the second half of the 20th century. Apart from everything else, just to be able to work with someone who made Manhattan and Annie Hall, films that I grew up with and had a huge affect on me, it was wonderful. But especially on a film that has such a wonderful heart to it as well, and has such a romance to it. And to get to work with Woody Allen in Paris as well is great."
On the script and figuring out the film's time travel aspect:
Michael Sheen: "I only got my pages. I worked that out after I bumped into Marion Cotillard in New York long before filming started. She told me who she was playing and I thought, 'That's not a modern day character.' I started to go, 'I see,' and I worked it out then. But there were things that I discovered about my character that I only found out after we'd finished filming. Like, I didn't know that my character had an affair with Rachel [McAdam's] character, so that was kind of interesting as well."
On whether he would have changed anything about his performance knowing what he now knows about the film:
Michael Sheen: "No, not really. I mean, I would try and do it better, but other than that, no. [laughing] It was really interesting to work in that way. One of the things that I found fascinating about working with Woody is that he's a very sort of un-modern filmmaker in a way, in terms of the way he works with the actors. The modern idea is that you play subtext and it's what's going on under the surface that is of interest in the scene. And Woody is anti-subtext, it seems to me. He doesn't want anything going on under the scene. He just wants you to play the surface of the scene as much as you can, to the point where he wants you to improvise constantly. Where, if I was doing a scene with you and you had all the dialogue, as you're speaking I would constantly be going, 'Really? Why? How do you feel? Why would you...?' You're doing that all the time. Rather than playing any kind of subtext, he encourages you to allow the story to do the work. The story reveals the story, rather than the actor reveals the story."
"Maybe if I had known more, I would have tried to do more in the scene and it would have taken away from the way Woody likes to work. It was kind of fascinating to see that in action. [...] The way Woody works is that you can still have a backstory going on, but he's just not interested in seeing it. I think that's really interesting. It's a kind of refreshing way of working. It was quite freeing as an actor to be able to do that."
On playing an American:
Michael Sheen: "A know-it-all American, but I think an American who wished that he was British. I think that was kind of interesting to get a British person to play an American who wishes he was British. Maybe he wishes he was European more than British, maybe."
On preparing to play an art connoisseur:
Michael Sheen: "Fortunately, I am an expert in all the areas that my character's an expert in so I didn't have to do any research at all. No, I remember when we were doing the scene in front of the Picasso painting. I remember as we were walking along, maybe I was just getting into character but I remember me sort of pontificating about various works of art that were around us. I remember thinking, 'Yeah, I should shut up now. I'm starting to sound like my character.'"
On working with Carla Bruni:
Michael Sheen: "I think everyone was incredibly relaxed about her being in it. My first scene was with Carla, so that first day there's a lot of downtime in between takes and so me and Carla were just sitting there, chewing the fat. It was great to be able to speak to someone who is both a performer - she's a singer and a songwriter - and also the First Lady of France. So the in between take conversation was fairly wide-ranging and interesting. She's very, very warm and open and accessible. She was just really, really charming. It was one of the high points of the whole experience was just to be able to spend a few hours talking to her about her last state visit to China and these amazing things she does as the First Lady."
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Midnight in Paris hits theaters on May 20, 2011.
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