Robert Sheehan: ‘My anxiety had got to the point where if I was left alone I was a twitching mess’

He’s known for freewheeling roles in Misfits and The Umbrella Academy, but now he’s written a book on meditation. What led him to this mindful career pivot?

“I was in a deep meditative state, very close to death,” explains Robert Sheehan. “It’s called deep sleep.” The actor logs on to our video call wearing a vest and yoga pants, apologising for missing his alarm. He is calling from a sofa in Toronto, where he is visiting his Canadian “missus” (he and “her good self” are based between Toronto and Cork in Ireland). He is knackered from a week in LA spent promoting the fourth and final series of Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy. But he did actually meditate last night, in bed. Or rather, on bed. “It’s not like a horizontal lay-down, but a sitting up,” he says. He spent 20 minutes trying to make his mind grow more relaxed before sleep. “It’s a good way of shaking off the day.”

Sheehan has written a book called Playing Dead: How Meditation Brought Me Back to Life. Many will know the actor from his breakout role as the lovable motormouth Nathan in E4’s supernatural teen show Misfits, and as gang member Darren in the gritty Irish TV crime drama Love/Hate. Younger audiences may be more familiar with the 36-year-old as The Umbrella Academy’s Klaus, a gender-fluid time-traveller who suffers from addiction and can commune with the dead. On screen, Sheehan is witty and electric, with an impish sense of humour and a flamboyant physicality. That energy seems at odds with the earnest self-seriousness one associates with wellness culture. “I don’t want to slag other meditation writing off, but a lot of it neglects to include moments of silliness,” he says. “The way I try to square it is by writing a book that’s a good laugh.”

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