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Plenty of people are onto the emptiness but it takes real guts to see the hopelessness.
Michael Shannon -
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.
Michael Shannon
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There's nothing routine about 'Boardwalk Empire.' It's like being in some secret society where they call you up and tell you where to go: 'Meet us at the corner of such and so.'
Michael Shannon -
If you give me enough time, enough leash, I can become pretty reasonable.
Michael Shannon -
It's obviously a lot harder to try and be a good guy than it is to be a bad guy. The world is a fundamentally evil place, it seems like. So in order to be a good person, you have to fight temptation and vice.
Michael Shannon -
I like to play characters that get to do it all - to have a bit of comedy here and a bit of pathos here and a bit of suspense here, that's what's fun.
Michael Shannon -
One thing I'm a big fan of is the theater of the absurd. That's what I come from, that's what I love to do more than anything. What I love about absurdity is the words "comedy" and "drama" get thrown out the window and it's just life, which is absurd.
Michael Shannon -
If you don't believe there's some organising principle, or somebody up in the sky pulling the strings, then it can be very stressful. And nature itself is very arbitrary - it's not malevolent or benevolent; it doesn't even know we're here.
Michael Shannon
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I'm equally terrified of both comedy and drama. The only thing I'm really comfortable with is action.
Michael Shannon -
What I'm angry about, and I've gone on record saying this, is I think that financiers get away with murder. They realize they can get something for nothing and they won't settle for anything else. There's something called a Schedule F. If I work for a Schedule F contract that basically means I'm doing the movie for free because by the time I pay all my commissions and taxes there's barely anything left for me to live on. This whole notion that you do work that you love for very little money and then you go out and do something you hate to make money.
Michael Shannon -
I don't pick my roles by genre; that's kind of silly.
Michael Shannon -
A lot of times the characters I play tend to be kind of loners or they don't have best friends or best buddies.
Michael Shannon -
One of the great things about acting is you can do things that in real life would get you in trouble. I think that's something I figured out pretty early on.
Michael Shannon -
I've never worried about anything in my life a fraction of the way I worry about my daughter. It's much more than hoping people like the play you're in, or that your outfit doesn't look bad. It's the real deal.
Michael Shannon
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I guess if there's one thing that might surprise people about me, it's that I'm very obedient. I'm kind of like a dog. I look at acting as kind of a service industry. You're there to serve the writer and the director. I don't really look at it as an act of self-expression, like I'm going to say what's on my mind.
Michael Shannon -
I'm just kind of odd. There are dark forces in the world, and if you pay attention to what's going on around you, you end up incorporating it into the storytelling. Maybe it's some aspect of myself that's coming through that people are seeing, that I am in fact a quiet psycho.
Michael Shannon -
It's a little bit odd. The first time you do the play, you kind of throw yourself into it, trying to get the most out of all the individual moments. Then, a few hours later, you're still there, wondering what you could possibly do differently than what you just did a couple hours ago.
Michael Shannon -
I'll tell you what's funny about it [NSA wiretapping]: They tell us we got to cut the budget; we have to have budget rollback. We're going to cut the budget on air traffic control, and every once in a while your plane is going to be delayed for three hours. But we do have the money laying around to hire people to read your emails and listen to your phone conversations. That just doesn't make any friggin' sense at all.
Michael Shannon -
I get pretty attached to the majority of the characters I play. I can't help myself.
Michael Shannon -
A lot of times people will send me stuff. They will find something and they will send it to me and then I will take a look at it. Every once in awhile I will go on IMDB for 10 or 15 minutes and look around. But I am not a huge gearhead. I don't even have my own computer. I use my girlfriends.
Michael Shannon
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People are morons. I don't do any social media stuff. I have people telling me all the time, "You should do Twitter, you should do this, you should get on Facebook." Are you insane? I'm not doing any of that crap. I stay the hell off that thing. Every once in a while, I send a business email, and that's it.
Michael Shannon -
When you put your costume on and you get your hair and your makeup done [for a role] and you stare in the mirror you feel like a different person.
Michael Shannon -
The thing that is always important to me is the relationships. I feel like until I get around with the actual people that I am going to be working with there is only so much that I can do.
Michael Shannon -
Inevitably people will get tired of me. People get tired of everyone except Jimmy Stewart. I'm not saying Jimmy Stewart would get tired of me, I'm just saying people will never get tired of Jimmy Stewart.
Michael Shannon