So was this like we hear where you only got your pages or were you able to read the whole script?

Sheen: No, I only got my pages, yeah.

When did you find out that there was this whole time travel plot?

Sheen: 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's character, so that was kind of interesting as well.

Did you feel robbed when you found out that your character got to have an affair with Rachel McAdams and you didn't even know about it?

Sheen: Ah, no.  I've made up for it since. [Laughs]

Would you have changed anything about your performance in hindsight, knowing more?

Sheen: No, not really.  I mean, I would try and do it better, but other than that, no.  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.  So the story reveals the story, rather than the actor revealing the story.  I think it's part of that whole thing.  Maybe if I had known more, I would've tried to do more in the scene and it would've taken away from the way Woody likes to work.  It was kind of fascinating to see that in action.

Don't you think Paul has some ulterior motives any time he's teaching his lessons and giving his lectures?  It's not just about sharing knowledge, is it?

Sheen: No, but that doesn't mean that you have to play that.  I think there's a tendency for actors – and I include myself – that once you know something about someone's backstory or you know something their inner life, you want to somehow indicate that to the audience all the time, to let the audience know that, you know, 'Look how much work I've done on this' and 'Look how much I know about this character backstory and his life.'  The way Woody works is that you can still have a backstory and you can whatever's going on going on, but he's just not interested in seeing it.  And I think that's really interesting.  It's a kind of refreshing way of working.  It was quite freeing and liberating as an actor to be able to do that.  It doesn't mean he hasn't got an inner life.  It's just, that's not necessary in order to tell the story.

Rachel described Owen as the mouse, her as the cat, and you as the even bigger cat.  How did you see that whole dynamic and that relationship between you guys?

Sheen: Well I suppose, as the character, I could see that there was some discontent in their characters, but the character is so self-confident and so full of himself that he didn't really feel the need to pounce on anyone, catlike.  You just sort of let them come to you, I suppose.  But again, because I didn't know that our characters were having an affair, I just didn't play any of that because it just didn't come up.  I was certainly aware of an attraction for her character by my character.

Was there ever a question of you playing an Englishman or was it always supposed to be an American?

Sheen: No, he was always an American.  A know-it-all American, but I think an American who wished that he was British. An Anglophile, absolutely.  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, yeah.

Did you research art history or would that have been forbidden too?

Sheen: Fortunately, I am an expert in all the areas that my character's an expert and so I didn't have to do any research at all. [Laughs]  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  me sort of pontificating about various works of art that were around us and I remember thinking, 'Yeah, I should shut up now.  I'm starting to sound like my character.'

Speaking of artists, are there any artists that you would want to sit down over drinks or dinner with?  Anyone from the past?

Sheen: Oh god, yeah.  Absolute.  So many people, that's the thing.  You can't go far wrong with the group who are in this film, but I would love to have been around maybe...there was a moment in the late 40's, early 50's in SoHo in London where there was extraordinary artists like Freud – a painter, Lucian Freud – and Francis Bacon and poets like Dylan Thomas and Augustus John.  All kinds of extraordinary people around that time.  That would've been quite exciting.  But I'd also love to have been around in Europe during the birth of the psychoanalysis movement.  So you have Freud and Jung and Ernest Jones and people like that who were around and that would've been extraordinary.  Also, I mean it's not really artists, but scientists.  In the 20's were people were coming out of laboratories and discovering the rules of quantum physics and the whole universe was starting to take on a different nature and these people were coming out with their brains boggled by what they were discovering.  And that would've been quite interesting, to sit down with them.  And to meet Shakespeare and Marlowe and all those writers who were around then as well.  To listen in on their conversations would have been quite interesting as well, in Elizabethan times.  There's a lot of the eras to go back to, I guess.

Are you jealous that you didn't get to participate in the more magical side of the film?

Sheen: Well in a way what was lovely was to be able to watch the film and not know too much about it.  I mean, I knew that I was in there so I could just enjoy it.  That was really great.  I would've loved to...It'd be lovely to play one of those characters.  I've played my fair share of real-life people, but it would've been lovely.  It was really great to see, like, Adrien [Brody] – without giving too much away – to see Adrien playing that character and Kathy [Bates].  It was delicious watching all that. Really enjoyed that.

Where does appearing in a Woody Allen film rank for you personally?

Sheen: It's one of the great opportunities of my career, absolutely, to work with someone who is kind of a living legend really, and who I think has kind of documented certain  certain middle class modern life, and the mores of a certain kind of echelon of society probably better than anyone else, I think, through film.  I suppose 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.  So it's a sort of extraordinarily honest account what life is actually like for a lot of people.  I don't think that's necessarily what he was setting out to do, but when you look at the work, it's an extraordinary documentation of, certainly, 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 that have 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.

It was nice that he decide to kind of leave New York and move to tell stories in your neck of the woods.  What does that mean, as a European?

Sheen: Well, I think he's doing his European tour, really, isn't he? [Laughter]  It's like that grand emperors of the past, doing their tours.  It's wonderful.  It's great to be able to see, like, when the film opens and we have that montage almost exactly like the one in Manhattan to New York and now it's to Paris with this wonderful jazz music playing.  It's just great.  I could just sit and watch that sequence done in every city that he likes with a different piece of music.  That would be just enjoyable in itself.  It's wonderful, I think, for Europeans to see that.

A lot was made of [French First Lady] Carla Bruni in the film.  Obviously, more international scrutiny.  What was it like working with her and were you sort of aware of that scrutiny on-set as you were making the film?

Sheen: Not on-set, no.  Not at all.  I think everyone was incredibly relaxed about her being in it.  My first scene was with Carla, and 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 songwriter – and also the First Lady of France.  So the in-between take conversation was fairly wide-ranging and very 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...Life as the First Lady of France.

Does it just keep you balance to go from Tron or Alice in Wonderland to Twilight to Brian Clough.  From all these different characters to doing something like this.  Do you just say yes to every opportunity that comes up?  Is it keeping a balance?  It seems like you have a wide range.

Sheen: No, I hope I only say yes to the interesting, good ones.  I have worked very hard to keep all my options open in terms of the range of things that I can do.  I don't want any area to be closed off to me in terms of the medium I perform in or the stories I tell or the scale of the audience or whatever.  So I'm always trying to do things that will challenge me and that hopefully will be of interest to the audience. 

Going back to the sort of litany of real-life people that you've played.  Is there someone else that you're sort of gunning to play?

Sheen: Not really.  It's sort of a coincidence that I ended up playing a lot of real-life people, only insomuch as they were mainly written by one man, Peter Morgan.  So it's not like I went looking for scripts that were about real people.  It's more to do with looking for stories that are worth telling and that I connect with and that hopefully will have meaning for the audience.  So it's the story rather than the character, ultimately.  It's not like I'm looking for real people, but very often real people have extraordinary stories.  The combination of the two is good, but no, there's no one I'm particularly aiming for, no.  Why, are you offering yourself up for me to play?

Sheen was on hand in the French Riviera for the world premiere of Midnight in Paris at the Cannes Film Festival last week.  The film opens in America on Friday, May 20th.