Michael Shannon Quotes
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I've known a lot of very religious people. My mother is very religious, but she was also very - is very private about it. She - when I was growing up, she never went to church. She just prayed and read her Bible and kept it to herself. So I'm not from a background of flamboyant believers. It's much more a personal issue.
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What should really be happening is a revolution. The system should be torn apart by the people and banks shouldn't be allowed to do what they do, and giant corporations shouldn't be allowed to run the world to the ground the way they're doing. But that's not happening for whatever reason.
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I want to focus on each scene. I'm a real perfectionist, and I don't want to feel like I didn't consider every possible variation of a scene. I come from a theater background, so I'm used to a lot of repetition, and I'm used to really attacking something over and over and over again.
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There are certain ways of being that people don't find acceptable or very pleasant in regular life, but you go out on stage and do pretty much the same thing and they find it spellbinding.
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Everybodys constantly being destroyed and rebuilding themselves, some more drastically than others.
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That's the great secret of humans: we're all the same person. The best thing to do is just go for the hug.
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There are so many people who make their fortunes of the misfortunes of others. I don't know if it's because the world is too damn crowded, or what, but it's something that I've been noticing for awhile.
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When you see a struggle that you may be having personally put on a big screen and in a roomful of people, then it makes you feel less crazy or alone, because you're seeing that other people are dealing with it too. You get to see in this imaginary scenario how people might try and answer some questions or deal with some problems.
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I started acting because I was miserable and crazy and wanted to be someone else, to run around and scream in front of people without getting in trouble.
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As an actor, I don't know what I'm doing. I've never known what I was doing. I show up the first day, I'm scared, and I just hang out. It's like being in detention - you just wait for it to be over. Then gradually I start to figure out what's going on.
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It is surprising that people are snapping photos and stuff and then putting them on the internet. For me, it is like, "Why would you want to do that?" It would be like knowing what your Christmas presents were before Christmas morning.
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Everything that happens on Wall Street only fortifies my opinion that there is in fact a more ludicrous industry than the entertainment industry.
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Theater is the best. That's where you get the work done. You just really get in there and figure something out about a story or a character or life or the world. That's where magic stuff happens.
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My dad used to say, 'You have to become part of the machine to beat the machine,' and there's some validity in it. But honestly, even when I'm inside the machine, you still see me. I stick out a little bit.
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I think improv training really orients you to character development, more than taking a Strasberg class or Meisner class. Not only is it about developing character really quickly, but it's also about being a good partner in the scene.
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If you are only getting two takes and you are on a crazy set where there is a lot of noise and distractions and it is hard to focus - that is frustrating. But I don't mind two takes if there is a healthy respect with the work going on with the actors.
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If you are going to be on TV for however many years, you want to make sure that you have writers that are giving you something to work with, and I got that in spades.
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I've always been happy just to be working. It doesn't really matter for me how many people are familiar with my name or my picture, or whatever.
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I enjoyed living in Chicago and doing plays for little or no money. I never actually thought that I would leave Chicago, originally. I wasn't one of those people that had a plan to pack up the van and drive out to Hollywood. I didn't want to.
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If you don't fight the system, you can either take advantage of the system or let the system take advantage of you.
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I know this'll sound obnoxious, but acting was very much an accident for me. I didn't have, like, posters of Marlon Brando in my bedroom when I was growing up.
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I never went into acting to be able to scare everybody. If I'd wanted to frighten people, I could have joined the C.I.A.
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I certainly don't want to have too many pre-conceived notions before I show up because then you might be cutting yourself off from the real lessons of what is going on.
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You got to know what's worth keeping and what's worth letting go.