Michael Shannon Acting Quotations

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.