Michael Shannon famous quotes

Everybodys constantly being destroyed and rebuilding themselves, some more drastically than others.
-- Michael Shannon

#Rebuilding

This whole notion of the acting career as a monopoly where you rise to power... it doesn't really work that way. I don't ever really feel powerful in any way. It's kind of the same thing it's always been: You just figure out what you want to do and you do it.
-- Michael Shannon

#Powerful #Careers #Acting

Everything that happens on Wall Street only fortifies my opinion that there is in fact a more ludicrous industry than the entertainment industry.
-- Michael Shannon

#Wall #Facts #Entertainment

That could sound arrogant, I guess, but sometimes I feel like I have a bit of a Zelig thing. I'll blend in wherever. I'm from the South, so I'll have a Southern accent when I'm home. But if I'm up here in New York, I have a British accent.
-- Michael Shannon

#New York #Home #Southern

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

#Couple #Play #Trying

Humility in this business [acting] isn't just a matter of being polite, it's kind of a matter of survival. You can't ever afford to think that you're the bee's knees, because you could always afford to be better. You have to always be searching for something better.
-- Michael Shannon

#Humility #Thinking #Survival

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

#Dog #Self #Expression

Most of the time for movies and stuff, with the exception of Jeff Nichols, who I've worked with a few times, you just don't know people too well. Everyone is cordial and nice and some people are very genuinely friendly, but once the movie is over you never see them again.
-- Michael Shannon

#Nice #People #Over You

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.
-- Michael Shannon

#Character #Magic #Stories

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

#Tired #People #Just Saying

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

#Media #People #Insane

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

#Cutting #Phones #Air

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

#Drama #Fans #Comedy

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.
-- Michael Shannon

#People #Way #Certain

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

#Real #Thinking #Acting

Well, I think anybody who's had a baby can tell you that once you have a baby, they kind of become the main focus. I don't think there's gonna be a lot of room for anything else.
-- Michael Shannon

#Baby #Thinking #Focus

If you give me enough time, enough leash, I can become pretty reasonable.
-- Michael Shannon

#Giving #Enough Time #Enough

When I'm working, I don't wake up and say, 'OK, time to go be intense.' I just look at whatever scenes we're working on that day and break them down - just real intense everyday work.
-- Michael Shannon

#Real #Everyday #Looks

You got to know what's worth keeping and what's worth letting go.
-- Michael Shannon

#Letting Go #Meaningful

I just keep working on things I like, and hope for the best. I hope people enjoy them.
-- Michael Shannon

#People #Enjoy #Hoping For The Best

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.
-- Michael Shannon

#Names #People #Matter

Honestly, as hard a profession as acting is, I think music is even harder. Acting, you're like a leech, because someone else does the hard part for you. They write it for you, then the director tells you what to do. You really just need to know how to pay attention, follow instructions.
-- Michael Shannon

#Writing #Thinking #Acting

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.
-- Michael Shannon

#Play #People #Hollywood

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.
-- Michael Shannon

#Growing Up #Acting #Sound

I think if you watch a lot of what I do, you're going to ultimately walk away seeing me. I can't hide - that impression is a personal impression people have of me.
-- Michael Shannon

#Thinking #People #Watches

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.
-- Michael Shannon

#Real #Focus #Variation

I've known a lot of religious people. My mother is very religious, but she also is very private about it. When I was growing up, she never went to church. She just prayed and read her Bible and kept it to herself. I'm not from a background of flamboyant believers. It's much more a personal issue.
-- Michael Shannon

#Mother #Religious #Growing Up

If I were God, I would just be up there scratching my head, thinking, 'What the hell am I supposed to do with this?' For everyone helping an old lady across the street, there's someone else bludgeoning a person to death. And sometimes they're the same. How can He separate us all out?
-- Michael Shannon

#Thinking #Helping #Sometimes

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.
-- Michael Shannon

#Dad #Machines #Littles

It's always very daunting to play someone who actually existed. You have to honor that, and be specific and accurate and try to make people believe that you're that guy, which is really hard.
-- Michael Shannon

#Believe #Play #People

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.
-- Michael Shannon

#Running #Crazy #People

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

#Daughter #Mother #Real

Plenty of people are onto the emptiness but it takes real guts to see the hopelessness.
-- Michael Shannon

#Real #People #Emptiness

Design is the fundamental creative activity with which we direct our lives, and collectively, the earth's transformation from its original, natural state into our human-made world.
-- Michael Shannon

#Creative #Design #Fundamentals

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.
-- Michael Shannon

#Crazy #Struggle #People

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

#Fighting #Order #Evil

Let's point out the elephant in the room: Actor bands are not notoriously successful enterprises. I can't think of any.
-- Michael Shannon

#Successful #Thinking #Elephants

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

#Dark #People #Attention

One of the reasons I'm an actor is because I was no physical specimen as a child. I wasn't athletic and didn't have any prowess in that regard. Growing up in Kentucky, most little boys were trying to get into sports, and it was very competitive, so that was not to be. But I did want to do something.
-- Michael Shannon

#Sports #Children #Growing Up

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

#Secret #Empires #Routine

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

#Fun #Character #Play

I don't pick my roles by genre; that's kind of silly.
-- Michael Shannon

#Silly #Roles #Kind

I get pretty attached to the majority of the characters I play. I can't help myself.
-- Michael Shannon

#Character #Play #Majority

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.
-- Michael Shannon

#People #Acting #Scare

That's one of the great things about acting - you get to pretend you're somebody else, which is great if you get bored with yourself.
-- Michael Shannon

#Bored #Acting #Great Things

The stage is a routine. It keeps you grounded, like a metronome. I find that soothing.
-- Michael Shannon

#Routine #Metronomes #Stage

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

#Believe #Sky #Arbitrary