Michael Shannon

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“The stage is a routine. It keeps you grounded, like a metronome. I find that soothing.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Everybody's constantly being destroyed and rebuilding themselves, some more drastically than others.”

“You can't escape this feeling of disintegration. The world is fragile. But you also can't let it ruin your life. I'm actually a pretty composed person. I guess people imagine I spend my life thinking about crazy, sinister things but I don't, really. It's not like I'm trying to exorcise any demons.”

“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.”

“One of the reasons I got into acting to begin with is that I was trying to figure out how life worked. It was interesting to me to try and follow how other people, real or imaginary, would deal with problems, because I was trying to deal with my own problems.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“I get pretty attached to the majority of the characters I play. I can't help myself.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”