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

Playing Dead is part memoir, part manifesto. It includes popular science, poetry, breathing exercises, and forays into bizarre humour (at one point he offers a tongue-in-cheek ode to his central heating). Sheehan is self-aware enough to realise that going on about the path to enlightenment may sound pretentious, or “reduce your identity to cliche”, as he puts it in the book. Still, the actor’s meditation journey involves rites of passage including Tibetan singing bowls, a silent retreat, and a pilgrimage to the Goa Gajah temple in Bali.