Ruth Sheen is Mike Leigh's listener: the woman at the kitchen table who hears everyone out and does not say what it costs her. Six films with him have made her the steadiest presence in his ensembles, and Another Year (2010) is the one to start with.
Fi1m perspective
Watch Ruth Sheen in a Mike Leigh film and you will mostly be watching her listen. In Another Year (2010) Gerri counsels patients at a doctors' surgery for a living, then goes home to Tom (Jim Broadbent), the allotment and a kitchen that keeps filling with lonely people who need her more than she needs them. She does not make speeches. She cooks what they have grown, asks a question and waits, and Sheen makes the waiting the centre of the film. We scored it 87 and would send most people to it.
She has been doing this for Leigh since High Hopes (1988), where she played Shirley and had her breakthrough. Five more films with him followed, among them Secrets & Lies (1996), Vera Drake (2004) and Mr. Turner (2014), where she plays Sarah Danby, the artist's long-term partner. Around them runs a steady line of television: Bramwell, Brassic, Strike. That is the shape of the career: an ensemble actor who has spent most of it in other people's rooms, and made the rooms better.
Leigh builds his films through improvisation, and Sheen's reputation rests on being good at it. She has called it "a unique way of working... He's quite a hard taskmaster." The method suits a performer who works by attention rather than display, and it also explains why she is so rarely the name on the poster. In Vera Drake she is Lily, a small part in a film that belongs to Imelda Staunton; our review scored it 84 and did not single her out. That is the ensemble player's bargain. The film works, and nobody notices you holding up your corner of it.
Another Year is where the bargain pays out. Lesley Manville's Mary is the one falling apart, and she is unbearable and heartbreaking at once, but we found ourselves more moved by Gerri, who has to sit across from her and take it. Sheen lets us see that being the one who is fine is also work. Our reservation about the film was how sure Leigh is that Tom and Gerri are right and everyone else is to blame, and that certainty rests on Sheen. She carries it without once looking pleased with herself, which is harder than it sounds.
The only complaint anyone makes about her is that she is almost always in support, and almost always for Leigh. A lead written for her elsewhere would be worth the wait. Until it arrives, put on Another Year and watch the one who is not talking.
Biography
Ruth Sheen is an English actress. She trained at the East 15 Acting School and has appeared regularly in British films and television since the late 1980s. She has worked frequently with director Mike Leigh, playing Shirley in High Hopes (1988), a laughing woman in Secrets & Lies (1996), Maureen in All or Nothing (2002), Lily in Vera Drake (2004) and Gerri in Another Year (2010). Her performance in High Hopes won the European Film Award for Best Actress in 1989.
Sheen has also appeared in films including Run Fatboy Run (2007), Welcome to the Punch (2013), A Street Cat Named Bob (2016) and Mr. Turner (2014). On television she has had roles in series such as Bramwell, Misfits, Gangs of London and Hijack. In theatre she played Lyn in the 2007 premiere of Philip Ridley's Leaves of Glass at the Soho Theatre.
