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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
The thing about New York is, more than any other place I’ve ever been, you run into people on the street that you would never imagine you’d see, old friends, people just like there for a day or two. I find that all the time when I’m walking around Manhattan, running into people that I had no idea were even there. Michael Shannon Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
