With Michael Sheen and Kate Beckinsale as parents, Lily Sheen grew up on film sets. Thus her adult acting debut in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent came as little surprise as a love of acting is in her blood. In the film, Sheen plays Addy Cage, the on-screen daughter of Nicolas Cage. ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke to Lily about her role in the film, which is out now digitally and will release on 4K, Blu-ray, and DVD on June 21, working with Cage, and following in her parents’ footsteps creatively.
Tyler Treese: I know you appeared in some of your mother’s films such as Everybody’s Fine, but this is kind of your big acting debut as an adult. What led you to want to pursue acting?
Lily Sheen: I’ve always loved acting. I’ve always kind of known that world and it’s always really fascinating to me. I got to grow up and had the privilege of growing up with a ton of respect for actors and being able to kind of have a helping hand and all of that, but you know, I was really lucky. But ultimately, I mean, my family is so great. They have fantastic taste in movies, which I’m very lucky for, but I started acting when I was a little kid doing sort of play theater. And I started really liking the feeling of being able to play someone else and feeling feelings through another person’s experience and being able to kind of live out experiences or whatever that I might not feel comfortable doing in my own life.
But ultimately, what really led me to choose acting as my path, was [that] I had always wanted to be a writer, and I started kind of looking into how I could express emotion through other ways that aren’t just kind of direct emotional expression. And that started really coming through and acting for me when I was about 15 in school, and it’s been fantastic. It’s my favorite thing in the world. So I just feel really grateful. This has been the most amazing, perfect experience for me to possibly have. So I’m thrilled.
Being on set so often growing up, did that kind of help you feel comfortable while filming?
In a way, but really, what made me feel comfortable, I’m serious, is the cast. The cast is fantastic, and they’re like, you couldn’t have asked for a better group of people to kind of help you out in the beginning. They were really funny, sort of real, genuine people. So it was a really welcoming environment and all the crew, we were in Hungary, the Hungarian crew was fantastic, and [director] Tom [Gormican] was amazing. He really made sure to kind of, really specifically make sure I was doing all right, which I was really grateful for, and just check in on me and check in on the rest of the cast and make sure that we were all getting along. So it was very difficult. It would’ve been very difficult for me to feel uncomfortable, I think regardless.
Working with Nic Cage had to be such a treat. What did you learn most about just that experience? He’s really an actor’s actor.
Yes, exactly. He’s great. It’s exactly what you said, he really is an actor’s actor. He does the coverage for you on your side. He acts with you all the time. He’s always present in the moment, and he’s always having the real experience with you, even if it’s not necessarily going to help him, you know? Which is like, the most giving thing you can do as an actor. So not just that, but Ethan Hawke said that he’s the only person who’s actually doing anything different right now, and I think that’s very true.
Seeing him act is very playful. He really is enjoying himself and he wants to try every different route and he wants to start somewhere and finish somewhere. It’s amazing to see, especially in film acting, I feel like it’s not as typical to have that kind of freedom that he has with acting. And that’s something I’m really jealous of. I kind of wanted to soak up as much as that as possible.
This film is such a fun one for you because you and your on-screen mother are really playing the straight person to Nic Cage’s ridiculousness. What did you enjoy most about Addy?
Oh, she’s amazing. I mean, she was sort of who I’d love to be when I was 16. She was so sure of herself. That’s kind of the cornerstone of her character, is really wanting to be seen. She knows her identity. She knows that she’s separate from her family and she wants, you know, she’s not sort of caught up in the Nic Cage of it all, which I certainly am.
So, I felt like she’s very adamant about, this is me and I am a completely separate entity and I want to be appreciated for that. I’m not impressed by all your glamor and glitz. I want to just show off my own side. That was what really drew me to her. I feel like she didn’t feel like a cookie-cutter teen in a movie, you know? She felt very real to me and someone that, I would’ve wanted to be friends with if she had been in my school.
I spoke with the director and he talked about Nic’s desire to really go above and beyond the script, really enjoying and experimenting within the scenes. Were there any fun, off-the-cuff moments while you were filming that really stood out?
Yes. I mean, that was what was so cool about all the actors, is that they’re so comfortable and they’re so smart and funny that they were able to kind of just go crazy all of the time. Pedro [Pascal was always riffing, and he was coming up with some of the stuff in the movie, that whole part about the dead cat at the end, about Grandma’s dead cat, was just off the cuff of me and Sharon [Horgan] were like, just trying our best not to be laughing through it.
Then Nic, our final scene, he has his belt on, and it’s got the bee on the front and he improvised saying his own line from The Wicker Man, “Not the bees!” Which is also one of my favorites of his movies. So that was a genuine laugh from me when he said that, it’s amazing. They’re really masters.
You mentioned enjoying The Wicker Man. Nic Cage’s filmography just spans generations. When you were growing up, what was your Nic Cage movie?
Well, what’s awesome about him is he really is kind of, he’s the actor of his generation, he’s the actor of my generation, people that are sort of in my age, demographic got introduced to him by National Treasure. And then as you get older, you start to realize like, “Oh, he’s a lot more than just National Treasure.” So I remember watching, kind of knowing Nic Cage as the man before I knew him as the iconic actor.
The movie that really kind of made me think that this is a whole different thing I was looking at was Leaving Las Vegas. I’ve never, before and after that, really haven’t seen anyone do a performance like that, where he’s so raw. But I love Adaptation. I think that it’s I think underrated, I don’t know why more people aren’t talking about it. He’s always doing those experimental roles. He always wants to be trying something that someone else hasn’t tried and pushing himself, which I think he’s beating himself at everything. You know what I mean? So I feel like every movie I’ve seen of his has gotten kind of better and better and better.
There’s a really great meta element to this film, there’s a movie within the movie where your character is being played by Anna McDonald. How surreal was all of the meta-comedy and enjoying that on set?
It was amazing, that was one of the things that really drew me to the script initially was, I love that kind of stuff. I love the Being John Malkovich, you know, all those kinds of movies, the heightened reality and absurdism. And so when we were on set, they had all been filming in Croatia for a while. So I wasn’t able to really know what they were up to, but kind of their own energy. They really became sort of a family while they were filming.
It really bled into everything we were doing, and it made it feel more free to be able to play around with how absurd you could get or how, you know, how meta you could get, and being able to watch Nic craft this character that was, you know, supposed to be him, but was sort of, completely a different version of him, it was an incredible experience just to kind of watch him be able to, I guess, push his own limits.
I love how Paddington 2 is just used as this kind of bonding moment throughout the film and several times. Are you also a fan of Paddington?
I love Paddington! I’m English, so I always love Paddington. He feels like a real-life person or like a little friend. But it’s so cool, I hadn’t seen Paddington 2 when I first read the script. I’ve seen it now and I completely understand, I was crying as well. Everyone in the movie has good taste.
This is a real bright start to your acting career. What are some of your future goals?
I mean, this has been a really fantastic experience. Like, as you said, I got to sort of watch it as an audience member when I was growing up, and being able to actually be in this experience, I feel like I really am kind of addicted now. I just want to work as much as possible, I’m so excited. I can’t wait to kind of see as many scripts as possible and be able to, I’d love to follow Nic. I want to see how many different kind of projects I can do, and just consistently best myself as much. I want to get better and better, hopefully.
