A Quote by Michael Shannon

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
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'm basically a pretty shy person and I don't dance or get into fights. But there are all these things inside me that get out when I perform. It's like a real world when I play, here I can do all the things that I can't do in real life.
Honestly, I was a good kid but I figured out pretty early that I had a gift for making people laugh. I wanted to entertain and when that happens you tend to get yourself in trouble in class.
I love saying terrible things. Things that I think are terrible and I've gotten in to trouble in the past - just hearing it come out of my mouth or seeing it typed and seeing it out there - something terrible that in real life isn't funny.
I'd had an early stint in acting school, and there was something satisfying about becoming a character, about being inside another mind that you had to create out of yourself. As I moved toward a life in writing, I found many of the things I'd learned in acting school still applied.
I loved sports, so acting died and it was all sport. But I always used to get in trouble, because after lights out I would sneak out to watch things on TV.
I think one of the great things about acting is the instant gratification: you just get up and start being a part of the story. The immediacy is something you get really addicted to.
Don't get too set on becoming an actor at an early age. I think that's where some people get into trouble. Acting becomes their life. I don't want that.
If you'd rather learn how to ride a horse or something, I would say do that. That'll keep you out of trouble. You would think a band would get you in trouble, but I think it's the opposite.
I do believe the world is a pretty sad, troubled, and violent place. Maybe that's why I focus on the trouble. Even though there are good people and good things, there's also a bunch of messed up stuff. And I learned early on, you have to have some trouble in your stories. I definitely go overboard on that, but I have a lot more fun writing about the trouble.
As people who make things, we have the ability to think of the most vile, awful things we can imagine, but it doesn't mean we believe those things. I allow myself to go places in my videos that I would never go in my real life.And I think that there has to be that place where you can create and not have to be living it in real life.
I ask myself, 'What is the value of acting and the attention that actors get? And yet there are so many people in the world doing incredible things for mankind, and they don't get much attention.' I do question about that, but I don't think I would've been a great doctor. I think I would've been a good surgeon. That fascinated me.
I think it's really easy for people to point out hypocrisy in people's lives. It's like yeah, I get on planes a lot, and I drank from a plastic water bottle today - you know what I'm saying? A lot of people would just be like, "Oh, you're a hypocrite. You live in an ecovillage for a month, and then you fly around the world to talk about a movie." Don't think that I don't think about those things! Don't think that that's not, like, a quandary in my life. It can be a pretty intense ethical dilemma. I think it's about figuring out, you know, navigating life.
If you ever get in real trouble, don't panic. Sit down and think about it. Remember two things, always. There must be some way out of it and there must be humor in it somewhere.
The trouble is that when you read criticisms about the other films that I've made you get the impression that they're all about themes, or problems, or ideas. But those are actually things that develop out of characters, out of images and out of other things. These more abstract things develop while working on the material, and out of it. It's not a theoretical exercise from the outset.
Of course, you can never watch something like somebody else watches something like you, but nonetheless, you have to try. So I think on camera you learn a lot about how much the camera does for you, which is what is the great luxury of movie acting. Or acting whether it's TV or movies or whatever it is, that the camera's really such a gift because there's so much that it sees and does if you're willing to just be open and expose yourself and all of that. So you also learn what doesn't matter. And sometimes when you think about things, you think things matter that don't matter.
When my friends and I grew up, we had 'Full House,' 'Growing Pains' and 'Roseanne.' These sitcoms were about something, about real people in a sense. They sort of super-sized real life where things aren't necessarily exactly how you go through them in daily life, but you can relate to something, and you can pull something out of it.
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