Michael Sheen is an inspiring example to all who care about Wales. With deeds not words the Newport-born, Port Talbot-raised actor is showing the limitless potential of our abused, supressed, exploited country. In so doing, he points us in the only direction that makes sense and that guarantees a truly healthy and fulfilling future for our ancient land: the unshackling from the deathly grip of UK dominance and control and the establishment of an independent Cymru taking its rightful place among the nations of the world. Oh, for a First Minister in the Senedd with a fraction of his intelligence, humanity, leadership and sheer quality!

Following the implosion of publicly-funded National Theatre Wales after Labour in Cardiff Bay allowed it to be taken over by a narrow clique of inept English/British internet addicts who knew little about theatre and less about Wales (see this article and this follow-up), it was dynamic Michael Sheen who quickly came to the rescue of this crucial component of Welsh culture and self-expression by using his own money to found a replacement in January 2025: the Welsh National Theatre (WNT). Had it been left to ‘Welsh’ Labour, forever genuflecting to the outright robbery of Wales by their English colonial master Keir Starmer, Wales would be without a national theatre in perpetuity.

In just over a year, Sheen and the talented Welsh team he has assembled to run WNT have already delivered tremendous work, beginning in November 2025 with a fundraising new production of Playing Burton, the 1994 play about Richard Burton by Mark Jenkins. It was an unequivocal triumph as Matthew Rhys gave a bravura one-man performance as Wales’ greatest actor at The Old Vic in London, Mwldan in Cardigan, William Aston Hall in Wrecsam, Reardon Smith Theatre in Cardiff, Theatr y Werin in Aberystwyth, Theatr Bryn Terfel in Bangor and Swansea Grand Theatre. This was followed early in 2026 by Our Town, a Welsh version of the 1938 classic by playwright Thornton Wilder (1897-1975). Performed at Swansea Grand Theatre, Venue Cymru in Llandudno, Theatr Clwyd in Mold and the Rose Theatre in Kingston-upon-Thames, England, it was another resounding box-office and critical success. Next up will be Owain & Henry in November at the WMC in Cardiff, a new play by Gary Owen starring Sheen himself as Owain Glyndŵr. It’s just down the road for me and it’s unmissable, so I’ve bought tickets – but don’t tell Malc, it’s a surprise!

What is noticeable already is WNT’s commitment to using Welsh actors, writers, directors and backstage staff – so avoiding the fatal flaw in the many nominally ‘Welsh’ institutions that are virtually no-go zones for actual Welsh people (see this article for details) and also providing some sort of counter-balance to the disgraceful racist appropriation of Wales increasingly familiar on British TV programmes that are set in Wales, where posh English luvvies putting on dubious Welsh accents are preferred to real Welsh actors. White actors blacking up to, for instance, play ‘the Moor of Venice’ in Othello are a thing of the past – but such enlightenment, awareness and respect has yet to be extended to Wales by the British imperialists who always have a blind spot when it comes to Wales, insultingly treating it as merely a part of England. Michael Sheen is already putting the little Englanders to shame.

***

Raising this topic gives me the chance to take a further look at the rich Welsh acting tradition. As a companion piece to previous articles – They also were thespians and Wales and film – here is another batch of interesting Welsh actors:

DAVID LEWIS DAVIES (1906-1974)
Towering David Davies from Brynmawr was 6’4″ tall, a living rebuttal of the short-and-stocky Welsh cliché and a useful distinctiveness that made him an obvious choice to fill authoritarian roles when he became an actor. This happened more by accident than design: he had moved to England when he was 20 to join the police in Essex but had to retire on medical grounds in 1937 owing to a duodenal ulcer. His height got him jobs as an extra on film sets around London and by 1942 he was getting small parts in provincial theatres, inevitably as a policeman, and he never looked back. His Welshness meant he was always in demand for films set in Wales, such as The Three Weird Sisters in 1948, A Run For Your Money in 1949, Tiger Bay in 1959 and Only Two Can Play in 1962. Additionally he often got walk-on parts as a heavy or a military man or a reassuring copper in many noted films, like the Disney adaptation of Treasure Island (1950), The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), Ben-Hur (1959) and The Heroes of Telemark (1965). Plenty of TV work came his way before he retired to Carmarthen – the town with the most pubs in Wales was the perfect location for a sociable chap who liked a pint.

LYNETTE DAVIES (1948-1993)
Tonypandy-born Lynette Davies was the daughter of a tax inspector and had a middle-class upbringing in Roath, Cardiff. She attended Our Lady’s Convent on East Grove, a Catholic school where girls were taught by veiled nuns to cook, clean, snap up a man in the white-collar professions and have lots of babies (I know this stuff because it was the school my mother went to 20 years earlier). Lynette Davies wanted much more out of life and set her heart on acting. She went to RADA in London, learnt the ropes at the Bristol Old Vic, and by 1974 was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company playing Regan in King Lear. She came to mainstream notice in soapy ITV capers like Clayhanger (1976) and The Foundation (1977), but that was as good as it got for her. Unsatisfying one-off parts in generic TV dross were all she could pick up through the 1980s. She moved back to Cardiff, renting a flat on Mortimer Road (yes, really!) in pre-gentrification Pontcanna, and hope briefly flickered when she landed an interesting role in S4C’s 1992 bilingual film The Winter Stallion/Eira Cynta’r Gaeaf – but it led to nothing and by December 1993 she had had enough. She chose to commit suicide, drowning in the Severn off Lavernock Point in a decisive final rejection of Catholicism and those scary nuns.

CLIFF GORDON (1920-1964)
Cliff Gordon’s inconsequential acting career barely merits a footnote in the annals of film, but it does have importance as the launching pad for his authentic talent as a playwright, script-writer, impresario and talent-spotter. Moreover, his tragic life story serves as a damning indictment of the British State’s sick persecution of gay men. Born in Llanelli (as Clifford Moses), precocious Cliff was appearing in his own variety act at the London Palladium when only 14 and the cute youngster was soon a familiar supporting actor in productions on the West End stage and a delightful presence on the BBC radio light entertainment hit Welsh Rarebit. But his progress was derailed in 1942 when he was one of the 24 homosexuals hunted down in a notorious witch hunt centred on the Coliseum cinema in Abergavenny. One young man killed himself and two others tried and failed, while 14 of the men, on the flimsiest of evidence that relied on some having their charges dropped if they implicated others, were given draconian prison sentences that ruined their lives – Gordon getting off comparatively lightly because he was in the Army. His theatrical and radio work summarily ceased and he laid low for some years before he made his only film appearance in 1949 in a mediocre ‘second feature’ called A Man’s Affair about two Welsh miners on holiday in Kent seaside town Ramsgate. He decided to concentrate on writing screenplays rather than performing and was behind a series of well-received early TV shows before he delivered his film masterpiece Valley of Song in 1953, a sparkling Welsh classic about rivalry in a male voice choir. He continued to organise musical shows but his work gradually petered out as he sunk remorselessly into depression and chronic alcoholism, not helped by his friendship with Dylan’s widow Caitlin Thomas (1913-1994), who could drink anyone under the table. There was time for Cliff to help kickstart the career of Shirley Bassey by putting her in one of his shows after seeing her perform in Cardiff’s docklands, but by age 40 the drink and the consequential organ failure had killed him.

DAFYDD HYWEL (1945-2023)
Dafydd Hywel was born in Carmarthenshire mining village Garnant and lived there until he died, a larger than life character brimming with energy, humour and ideas and a devoted Welshman to his bone marrow. He had a dazzling and versatile acting career on both Welsh and English language TV and also excelled in some top-notch Welsh films: Yr Alcoholig Llon (1984), an unsparing study of alcoholism directed by Karl Francis; charming sub-titled comedy Coming Up Roses (1986) that was screened at the Cannes Film Festival; Milwr Bychan (1987) about a scapegoating of a Welsh soldier serving in the British Army in Northern Ireland, also directed by Francis; and Rebecca’s Daughters (1992), part of an ensemble cast portraying the 19th Century Rebecca Riots when ordinary Welsh people defeated their English oppressors. As well as his immense contributions to TV dramas over decades, Hywel founded Cwmni Mega in 1994, producing hugely popular Welsh language children’s theatre and pantomimes that tour Wales to this day.

EMRYS LEYSHON (1922-2008)
From Pencoed in the Ewenni valley near Bridgend, Emrys Leyshon was never top of the bill but always in demand as a reliable, bit-part character actor initially in films and then in TV as well as on the stage, appearing in countless productions from the late 1940s through to the 1980s, a consummate professional who remained largely unknown to the public. He made his film debut in 1949 in The Last Days of Dolwyn, a drama about the drowning of a Welsh village to supply water to England, written and directed by Emlyn Williams (1905-1987), which was also the film debut of Richard Burton (1925-1984). Other noteworthy films Leyshon appeared in were Valley of Song (see above) and The Happiness of Three Women (1954), before he resorted to TV and theatre as he got older. He made London his home and eventually retired in 1983.

ANGHARAD REES (1949-2012)
Although born in London, where her Welsh father psychiatrist Linford Rees (1914-2004) was working at the time, Angharad Rees’s family moved back to Wales when she was a baby and she grew up in Rhiwbina, Cardiff. She always wanted to be an actor and, aided by her striking looks, she was getting parts in TV dramas and comedies while still in her late teens. Her film breakthrough came in the Hammer horror Hands of the Ripper (1971) and then she cemented her reputation as a luscious sex symbol playing Gossamer Beynon alongside the likes of Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor (1932-2011) and Peter O’Toole (1932-2013) in Under Milk Wood (1972), the probably unfilmable ‘play for voices’ by Dylan Thomas (1914-1953). From then on she mainly concentrated on TV, with only a few appearances in generally throwaway movies, and she shot to fame as feisty serving-girl Demelza in the BBC’s Cornwall-set period drama Poldark (1975-1977). She was barely off TV screens throughout the 70s and 80s and into the 90s, and proved she wasn’t just a pretty face in a series of compelling performances in programmes such as The Gathering Storm (1974), Joe’s Ark (1974), As You Like It (1978), Remington Steele (1985) and Trainer (1992), while she also made a mark in radio plays and on the stage She married actor Christopher Cazenove (1943-2010), settled in London and had two children. But things started to go very wrong in the 1990s. She and Cazenove divorced and then their eldest son Linford Cazenove (1974-1999) died in a car crash aged only 25. Angharad never really recovered from the grief. She withdrew from acting, remarried, developed her own successful jewellery design business and always retained her link with Wales, giving exquisite poetry readings at the gala opening of the Welsh Assembly in 1999. However there could be no consoling her, and she died far too young aged 63.

TALFRYN THOMAS (1922-1982)
With his horizontal teeth, lip-smacking Swansea accent and strangely appealing mix of lascivious glee, wide-eyed innocence and faraway wistfulness, Talfryn Thomas couldn’t help but grab attention in the many otherwise forgettable TV dramas, sitcoms, potboilers and soaps he appeared in between the 1950s and the 1980s. He was rarely out of work, inevitably called upon whenever a stereotypical Welsh character was required, usually villainous, seedy or sentimental. He also picked up small, scene-stealing parts in a handful of films, most notably as Mr Pugh in the aforementioned star-studded 1972 version of Under Milk Wood – which got a critical mauling at the time, but has since gradually risen in estimation to become a bit of a cult among film buffs. Thomas never left Wales. He died in Cardiff when only 60, weakened by his traumatic experience as the rear gunner and only survivor of a Lancaster bomber shot down over Germany in WW2.