Spending 25 years honing his talent, this Academy Award Nominee has gone from a cameo in Groundhog Day (yes we couldn’t believe it either) to being recognized as one of the most venerated actors of our time. If you have ever seen the profoundly chilling Take Shelter from 2011, it’s not hard to see that he is head and shoulders above his contemporaries, as well as being someone who cares deeply about the human condition. We wanted to pick Shannon’s brain about what inspires and motivates him to be the man who he is today. What we found out surprised us. He has a passion for climate change as a cause, an exceeding love for his family and a music career that is somewhat of a secret to many.

You have a couple of films coming out right now. Are you deep in the junket process?

It’s been an interesting ten days. Last weekend I was in Toronto doing press for a film called Freeheld, staring Julianne Moore and Ellen Page. So I was there for three days doing that, then I went back to Chicago for a day, then I went to New York for three days to do press for 99 Homes, then I came to LA to do more press for 99 Homes. So yeah my head’s spinning a little bit.

Does the process of having to champion your own films tire you out?

Not if I believe in them. I try to just have an honest conversation. I don’t really come up with talking points or anything, I just speak my mind. But you do inevitably have very similar conversations.

Well we’ll try to take the conversation in a little bit of a different direction. You’ve spent about twenty-five years in the acting business, inhabiting incredible characters on both screen and stage, and there’s a lot of topical issues prevalent in your work. Take Shelter, 99 Homes, Freeheld for example. Do you subscribe to the view that life imitates art?

Well I’m always happier working on something that I feel has some significance beyond simply being a piece of entertainment. On the other hand I never want to do things that are ponderous or condescending because I certainly don’t have the answer to life’s quandaries. But I’ve been very lucky to have met some pretty deep thinkers. People that put a lot of time, energy and devotion into the projects they work on. And I’m just lucky to ride on their shoulders.

It seems that your approach to acting is both spontaneous and also quite cerebral. Is there a lot of talking with the director about the motivations of the character you’re portraying?

At the end of the day I look at what I do as an investigation. My favourite playwright is Eugene Ionesco and his contention is that every story is a detective story, that we’re all just trying to figure out what the heck’s going on. And actors are doing that with people. If you look at a character like Rick Carver in 99 Homes, from the outside he’s someone who a lot of people don’t have much patience for, they just think he’s a scumbag or whatever. But for me I look at him and think, well why does this guy do what he’s doing? Why does he feel it’s okay to do those things? And how did he come to be? What shaped him? I think it’s important to answer these questions because you might watch 99 Homes and get upset about Rick Carver, but he’s not entirely a figment of the imagination. There’s a lot of Rick Carvers out there doing similar things, so why not try to figure out why the hell they’re doing them.

You’re essentially saying that you’re questioning the moral compass, which I think is needed more in art. I’m reminded of this quote by Alan Rickman, “Talent is an accident of genes and a responsibility as well.”

Yeah definitely. I could never have possibly foreseen the twists and turns that my life would take. I approach acting pretty much the same way I approached it twenty-five years ago. I’m just doing it because it interests me. I was never gunning for international superstardom or mountains of money or anything. I just kept showing up and saying, “Oh this is interesting, I like working with these people, they seem to know what they’re doing.”

I’m always loathed to take too much credit for anything because it’s such a collaborative process. And honestly without the writers and directors, what do I have? I can’t just show up on set and free style. For me it’s like you’re a servant. You’re serving the audience, you’re serving the director, you’re serving a vision. It’s not about exalting yourself.

I would not be a good acting teacher. But when people do on occasion ask me for advice I say, “Just pay attention. That’s the chief principle. Pay attention all the time.”

You said once that you find the world very threatening. We live in an incredibly fragile and crazy world. These two films that have just come out really present that outlook. Are there any other issues in the world right now that you feel you’d like to portray on screen?

Honestly for me the number one issue in the world right now is climate change. We absolutely have to do something about it. It’s beyond stupid what’s happening. And poor old Obama, bless his heart, is going around making his little speeches and they’re very sweet and everything but it’s just not enough. Now how you dramatize that and turn it into a movie I’m not sure.

I guess the one thing I would say is that as silly as most of them are, I’m in favour of the big disaster movies because I think maybe if enough people get scared that something like this could actually happen then maybe they will do something about it. Unfortunately I think for a lot of people those movies are total fiction, but that was the main reason I wanted to make Take Shelter. A lot of people look at that film and say, “what an amazing movie about mental illness,” and I think, well that wasn’t really what I had in mind. But whatever, that’s a part of it and I can’t blame people for perceiving it in that way.

What makes you laugh?

It’s hard to say exactly what makes me laugh. I have an extremely silly side to me that doesn’t necessarily get a lot of time in the sun, at least not in relation to what I do. Although I do have a comedy coming out this fall. I’m in a Seth Rogen movie called The Night Before. I play a pot dealer.

My favourite movie is The King of Comedy. That makes me laugh my ass off. When Jerry Lewis convinces Sandra Bernhard to take the tape off when they’re having the date, and then he just slaps her in the face and runs out of the room. Man, that’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.

And my kids make me laugh. My little daughter Marion is the funniest person on earth.

I know you have also invested time in the music world. What can we expect from you in the future in terms of your own music? And what are you enjoying listening to at the moment?

I’ve been listening a lot to the new Wilco record, Star Wars. I kind of can’t take it off right now. It’s blowing my mind. And I’m really into this band Deerhoof  I made a video for them not too long ago and when they come to town they let me know and I get to go and listen to them. My taste in music is kind of all over the place. I wish I got to go out and see more music. I haven’t been to a show in a while.
In terms of my own band, Corporal, we play when we can. We keep talking about how nice it would be to go on tour for two of three weeks and devote ourselves entirely to the music. But that two or three weeks doesn’t seem to exist. We all do different stuff. Our drummer Ray is in like twenty bands and our guitar player Rob is an actor too so it’s difficult.

I know you get asked a lot about the intensity of your roles. I want to just ask you about the commitment and effort, what you call, “the extra vinegar” in your work. You’ve left the “Michael Shannon zeitgeist” in so many roles over the years. What do you think people’s biggest misconception is about you? What would you like people to know about you in the work that you do?

That’s an interesting question. I mean honestly I look at acting like it’s my job to disappear. The best acting is invisible. I understand it’s natural for people as consumers to categorize things and look at your body of work and say, “oh okay, you do this.”  But I never show up with my trusty formula for a day’s work to make sure I achieve the full Michael Shannon effect. I show up and I’m lost and I’m searching for a character. And to me every single character I’ve played is extremely different and unusual and mysterious.

There’s nothing I would necessarily want people to know. An actor is a lens between the people creating the film and the audience, so I’m never really trying to call attention to myself. Now I think that maybe I inherently project a certain quality based on my physical attributes and maybe even based on my personality. Because I do have a lot of anxiety.

Do you?

Yeah, I’m not just sitting around whistling the whole time. Things happen in the world and I react to them. Like when a massive factory in China explodes and I hear about that, it makes me anxious. I worry about that.

There’s a scene in Take Shelter in the cafeteria where your character really loses it. It’s really a question of existentialism for me, asking where do we fit in and why aren’t more people getting up and raging when there’s so much reason to?

Exactly. Bingo. That’s very nice to hear you say that.

Winona Rider said of your work, “you could prepare for five years but all of that will crumble if you’re not present in the moment with someone like Michael. The way he works, that spontaneity, forces you to be alert.” Do you think there are enough actors taking their work seriously, the way that you do?

Yeah I do, and preparation is actually the key. If you just show up and haven’t read the script or thought about your character, and just expect something to happen. . . well that usually doesn’t pan out very well. Film is a very technical medium. One of the great misconceptions to me is that theatre is very fake and movies are like real life. I used to hear that said a lot and I’d never had that experience of it. To me movies are like surgery. And I think what Winona was talking about was how you need to have a surgical focus. Because every frame is crucial. There are ways to figure out how to exist in front of a camera and how to look good. You might watch someone and think, oh yes, that’s a person who should be in a movie, they’re making great facial expressions, their voice sounds nice. So there’s that component of it.

There’s also people who have a lot of raw talent but don’t have any sophistication and don’t understand that you need to have a relationship with the camera just as much as you need to have a relationship with the director and your fellow actors. You need to understand lenses and things like this in order to make a fully crafted performance. You need to be aware of all that stuff but you also need to forget about it. It’s a weird contradiction. You’re supposed to know how to do a lot of things and at the same time you don’t want it to seem like anything except an accident. Because that’s what life is.

99 Homes starring Michael Shannon and Andrew Garfield is out on DVD in January.

Header image courtesy of Victoria Will