52+ Michael Shannon Quotes On Stage, Snl And Water Interview

Michael Shannon is an American actor known for his intense, often dark and brooding performances. He has appeared in films such as Revolutionary Road, Man of Steel, and The Shape of Water, as well as television shows such as Boardwalk Empire and Ozark. He has been nominated for two Academy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and four Screen Actors Guild Awards. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Michael Shannon on leadership, love, life.

Top 10 Michael Shannon Quotes

1. Everything that happens on Wall Street only fortifies my opinion that there is in fact a more ludicrous industry than the entertainment industry.
2. Plenty of people are onto the emptiness but it takes real guts to see the hopelessness.
3. 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.
4. The magic word for me is pumpernickel. I love pumpernickel. I must have some Russian blood in me because I could just eat pumpernickel and raw onions.
5. 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.
6. A lot of times the characters I play tend to be kind of loners or they don't have best friends or best buddies.
7. 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.
8. People don't go to the movies to get the news, people don't go to the movies to learn a lesson. People go to the movie to get an emotional experience.
9. If you don't fight the system, you can either take advantage of the system or let the system take advantage of you.
10. 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 Short Quotes

• I just keep working on things I like, and hope for the best. I hope people enjoy them.
• I don't pick my roles by genre; that's kind of silly.
• Everybodys constantly being destroyed and rebuilding themselves, some more drastically than others.
• You got to know what's worth keeping and what's worth letting go.

Michael Shannon Quotes About Acting

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

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

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

I have been acting for over 20 years and I started in the smallest little theater that you can possibly imagine and then I very slowly built myself to this point. So it is never like there is this real sharp change or something that really startled me. It has just been very gradual. — Michael Shannon

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

Michael Shannon Famous Quotes And Sayings

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. — Michael Shannon

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

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

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

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'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. — Michael Shannon

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. — Michael Shannon

I'm equally terrified of both comedy and drama. The only thing I'm really comfortable with is action. — Michael Shannon

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

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

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

I don't travel for fun, because I travel so much with my work; when I'm not working, I mostly want to stay home. — Michael Shannon

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

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. — Michael Shannon

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. — 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

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

I just look at it as a real group activity when you are making movies. There are so many different artists doing so many different things, and they are all interconnected. So I like to see what everybody else is going to bring to the table before I make up my mind too much about anything. — 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

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

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

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

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

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. — Michael Shannon

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

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. — Michael Shannon

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

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

The most fascinating part of movies is the organism of the movie - it's such a bizarre thing to do, to make a movie. To see these people come together, band in unity, to create this thing that almost doesn't exist. It only exists because it's projected on a screen, but other than that, it's an illusion. — Michael Shannon

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

That's the great secret of humans: we're all the same person. The best thing to do is just go for the hug. — Michael Shannon

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. — Michael Shannon

Life Lessons by Michael Shannon

1. Michael Shannon's work demonstrates that dedication and hard work can lead to success, as he has achieved a great deal of critical acclaim and recognition for his performances.
2. He also shows that it is possible to be successful in both mainstream and independent films, as he has appeared in both blockbusters and smaller productions.
3. Finally, Michael Shannon's work serves as an example of how to approach difficult roles, as he often takes on complex and challenging characters.