(Credits: Far Out / Warner Bros)
Sun 5 October 2025 11:30, UK
Apart from being able to flash a wide, toothy grin, Michael Sheen doesn’t look anything like Jack Nicholson. The same couldn’t be said of his father, Meyrick, who was so convincing he even stepped in for the three-time Academy Award winner on the press tour for a movie.
How did Sheen Sr., who worked in HR for British Steel, find himself in the unique and enviable position of passing himself off as one of the greatest actors of all time? By winning a lookalike competition in a newspaper to find someone who’d pass the eye test as the doppleganger of his Joker, of course.
It wasn’t completely out of the blue, though, with Sheen’s love of the performing arts coming from his parents. In his spare time, his old man loved a bit of am-dram, and his mother, Irene, encouraged him to follow his dreams. He didn’t make his professional debut as an actor until the early 1990s, by which time his father had set the benchmark for bizarre industry anecdotes that needed to be topped.
The lookalike industry has been thriving for decades, and as convincing as some of them are, many of them are crap. Meyrick couldn’t have been too bad, seeing as his victory in the Nicholson contest got him an agent, and he started travelling around the world to do whatever it is that lookalikes do, which is probably turning up at random events and standing around for people to take pictures with them.
His most daunting gig came when he was invited to attend the German premiere of Tim Burton’s Batman, because the man himself would be there. However, instead of getting two Nicholsons for the price of one, the real one dropped out at the last second, placing Meyrick in an unusual spot, not least of all because the original had a series of press commitments lined up while he was in the country.
“So, he actually had to go and do radio interviews as Jack Nicholson,” the Frost/Nixon star told Desert Island Discs. One obvious stumbling block was that the One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Chinatown icon has a very distinct way of speaking, which wasn’t easy to even try and replicate for a guy who’d spent his life in Port Talbot.
“He just sort of made noises,” Sheen explained, adding that it wasn’t long until the ruse was uncovered. “When a record was on, the interview leaned over and went, ‘You are not Jack Nicholson’. My dad, without a moment’s hesitation, had a playing card taped to the palm of his hand that was a Joker with ‘Meyrick Sheen’ written on it. He showed the interviewer and went, ‘Meyrick Sheen. Even better than the real thing.’”
You can’t fault him for his confidence, despite the Welshman’s attempts at convincing a German radio host that he was the New Jersey-born Nicholson coming apart within moments. The younger Sheen never got the chance to work with the legend, but if he did or ever met him, he’s got a hell of a story to tell.
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