MICHAEL wears SHIRT, JACKET, TIE, and BOOTS by BOTTEGA VENETA, JEANS by KENZO, HAT and RADIATION PANTS are STYLIST's OWN.
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Michael Shannon: Reflecting on Life, Art, and Unity
In this candid conversation, Shannon discusses the balance between personal growth and professional ambition, his approach to roles that resonate with deeper meaning, and the spiritual philosophies that shape his worldview. Whether reflecting on the surrealism of stardom or the beauty of human connection, Shannon offers a perspective that is as thought-provoking as it is inspiring—a reminder that, beyond the accolades and characters, he is simply a man navigating life with curiosity and grace.
Left: MICHAEL wears SHIRTS, VEST, and SKIRT by YOHJI YAMAMOTO, SOCKS by DR. MARTENS. Right: MICHAEL wears SHIRTS and JACKET by BLUEMARBLE, VEST by MARNI.
Simon Rasmussen
How do you wake up? What's your state of mind when you open your eyes?
Michael Shannon
That's a fascinating question. I generally wake up pretty happy. The morning's actually my favorite part of the day because it's a clean slate. You wake up. I think the whole reason we sleep is to kind of separate the day, so it's not just one long, unending experience. And so when I wake up, I enjoy making my coffee and puttering around my apartment and thinking about what I have to do that day. And I enjoy a little bit of time to myself before I go out into the world. And yeah, I've heard other people say that they wake up grumpy or stressed out or whatever. And yeah, I don't really have that experience. For me, the nighttime tends to be the time that is more challenging for me.
SR
Challenging in what way?
MS
Well, just sometimes if I'm alone and it's you're usually tired from the day, but maybe not quite ready to go to sleep and thoughts come into the head. Maybe challenges I’ve had been dealing with, or maybe some regrets I have about things that have happened or just, it's usually a pretty contemplative time for me, the nighttime, and then I just tell myself to knock it off and go to sleep, and then it's fine. It's just a matter of coaxing myself into bed, which, yeah, I used to be a real night owl, and I'm trying to knock that off because I don't think it's particularly healthy to stay up very late at night. There's a saying, nothing good happens after midnight anyway, so I'm trying to adhere to that idiom.
Left: MICHAEL wears SWEATER by SAINT LAURENT, PANTS by LOEWE. Right: MICHAEL wears JACKET by BURBERRY, SHIRT by BOTTEGA VENETA, PANTS by DRIES VAN NOTEN, SHOES by DR. MARTENS.
SR
Is it the creative challenge or is it just a personal challenge of being a human?
MS
I think it's more personal. I mean, I wouldn't label it depression. It's not like I'm feeling hopeless or anything. I just usually have a lot on my mind. And last year was a very busy year for me, and I worked really, really hard. And then I was overseas a lot, and then I got back home in October and I said, I'm just going to take a little breath here, take a little break from working and all that, and just try to take care of myself a little bit. And so that's kind of been my mind frame for a few months now.
MICHAEL wears JACKET and SHORTS by JW ANDERSON, TANK TOP by MARNI, HAT by ALTOBELLO.
SR
Maybe I'm projecting here, but the coaching of yourself. I'm doing some inner family work, which on a theoretic level is you have your inner child, you have your inner teenager, and you have your critical parent, and I'm talking to all of those parts of me and comforting the inner child and teenager and telling the critical parent to step back. And it sounds like a similar thing for you.
MS
That's very eloquent. That triumvirate there is. I think there's a lot of people struggling with those three individuals.
SR
I think that's the human condition.
MS
I guess that's why they came up with it. But I have to say, I've kind of come down on the side of, and I don't want this to sound arrogant because it's not really, but I just come down on the side of I like myself, I'm a decent human being. I've given a lot of people entertainment and some sort of satisfaction over the years. I have a beautiful family and I'm not one of the bad guys. So, I've been cutting myself some slack.
SR
Thank you for sharing that. It's important to recognize our own beauty.
MS
Exactly.
MICHAEL wears JACKET, SHIRT and SHORTS by GUCCI.
SR
You work in an industry that is so cutthroat. So coming to that place, that recognition, that awareness is important. Congratulations.
MS
People are always looking to knock you down a peg if they feel like you're getting a big head. And particularly with the social media and all that, not that I really even look at it that much, but I hear things or whatever, and I don't need anybody to think about me in any particular way.
I'm not trying to be the greatest human being on earth. I'm just trying to enjoy my brief time here on earth.
MICHAEL wears FULL LOOK by BALENCIAGA.
SR
Has fame influenced your life, navigating that, maintaining your own self, your own authenticity?
MS
I find it kind of humorous, honestly, because not famous to myself, you know what I mean? To myself, as much as I've grown, I think over the years and changed, I'm still just that guy that was looking up auditions in the back of the newspaper in Chicago, to get a part in a play. Any play anywhere. It's funny. I was saying to somebody the other night, I don't even necessarily have a sense of tremendous accomplishment. Not to contradict what I said earlier, but sometimes I look back at all these films and things I've been in, and I think I did all that? That was me? That’s so weird. Half of it I don't even remember doing, but I've heard some people talk about Bob Dylan that way, that he's not interested in his own past. He's always just looking to be in the present or figure out what he's going to do next. And I think you could get buried in your past or buried under an avalanche of all the things you've done if you held onto them too closely.
So you just do things and you let 'em go, and it's like kites or balloons or something. They just kind of float away. In terms of fame, I've always, I've been a bit stubborn about it, really. I don't allow it to affect how I live my life. I take the subway everywhere, and if somebody recognizes me on the subway, I say, okay, yeah, that's me. And if they say they appreciate what I do, I say thank you, and then that's the end of it. But I don't want to live a cloistered life. That would be awful. And I do have certain, I am not an idiot. I know I have certain advantages and privileges that other people don't have, and I've been very lucky to have some financial rewards for what I've done. But even my ex-wife said, you never even do anything extravagant. A lot of people I guess go out and buy a fancy car or something. And I keep it simple.
MICHAEL wears SWEATER by BOTTEGA VENETA, SHORTS by MARNI, SOCKS and TIGHTS are STYLIST'S OWN.
SR
Was there a moment throughout your career on set or stage where that was profound, where it felt like something just clicked maybe early on, maybe later on?
MS
Oh, so many moments like that. I mean, dozens of them. My career has had a very long trajectory in the growth or the ascension of my career, I guess it never really spiked. It was kind of a slowly built thing, one stone at a time. But the one moment that just came to mind that I was in shock, basically when it was happening was when Zach Snyder invited me to his house in Pasadena to talk to me about the possibility of playing General Zod and Man of Steel. I couldn't believe it had that feeling. You get sometimes where you feel like you're being frank or something. I had a hard time believing it was actually true that he would actually want me to do that, because I just felt like I wasn't in that level of fame or whatnot, that a person playing that part would be in. But he was so kind and gracious when I went to see him and really enthusiastic about the idea of me doing it. And yeah, that was a huge moment. That was a huge, I'll never forget I was sitting because it wasn't in his office, it literally in his house. And I was sitting in his living room and I was waiting for him to come in, and I was looking out the window at these bushes in his yard, and there were all these hummingbirds flying around in the bushes, and I was staring at them, and I just felt like I had gone to another planet or something. I felt like I was hallucinating.
MICHAEL wears SHIRT and JACKET by ANN DEMEULEMEESTER, PANTS by MARNI.
SR
Are there any type of characters and roles that you are particularly drawn to?
MS
No, not really. It's more about stories at this point anyway, it's about stories that I think might be useful for people to see, because the fact of the matter is entertainment ultimately has a pretty soft impact on what actually happens in the world. But to the extent that it can have any impact, I want the work I do to have some impact or to provoke people to think about certain things that I think are important. But I'm not interested in preaching at people or browbeating people or making people feel bad about themselves. But I definitely can't just do things that I think are really silly ultimately, or don't have any resonance or meaning at the end of the day.
SR
So what is important to you?
MS
Oh goodness. The way people treat each other, the way we take care of each other, the way we take care of the world, the way we understand one another, the way we connect to one another. For me, God is unity. God is the unity amongst all things. And when people move towards unity towards togetherness, they are moving towards God. And when they're fractured in chaos and then disharmony with one another, they're moving away from God. So I like to try and find work that moves towards God.
SR
Oh, that's beautiful.
MS
Thank you.
SR
Amen into that.
MS
Thank you.
MICHAEL wears COAT by ALEXANDER MCQUEEN, SHORTS by BODE.
SR
Do you pray?
MS
Well, it's interesting. I meditate and when I talk about God, I'm not tied into any particular religion at this moment, but I used to live in Chicago and on the north shore of Chicago, there is a temple called the Baha’i Temple and the Baha’i faith. I used to go to this temple a lot when I lived in Chicago. The Baha’i faith, basically, I'm kind of summarizing it here, but it's basically the belief that the prophets of all religions are of equal significance and should all be studied and valued for all of their wisdom. That you don't have to just pick one and remain slavishly faithful to it. You can explore all of 'em and get what you can get. And I always thought that made the most sense to me. Now, they also have their own profit, the Baha’i profit, but that profit isn't any more or less important than any of the other ones. I was in Chicago recently for a short visit, and a very good friend of mine is Muslim, and he took me to a service at his mosque, and it was very beautiful. I had never been to one before. And I don't know what the correct word for it is, but the sermon that the Imam gave was very moving to me and something I actually really needed to hear at the time. And it focused on a phrase in the Quran with hardship comes ease. And that was kind of the focus of the sermon about how that can be true. It can be true with hardship can come ease, but it takes some discipline.
You can't just let your mind go willy-nilly wherever it wants to go. You have to be disciplined in your thinking and then your actions, and then you can find that for yourself. But I mean, that's something that frankly, I've been thinking about a lot lately too, and this goes back to where our conversation started, but how the mind, which is ours, which everyone has their own, and it's inside of your head, and yet for some reason we have such difficulty controlling it. And I've always wondered why this piece of our anatomy, which is innately ours within ourselves, is so hard for us to control. You would think if you had a thought, if you just thought brain do this or do that, it would do it. That there seems to be some other force at work. And that's what leads me to believe that there has to ultimately be some sort of spirit in the universe, because otherwise, why wouldn't we function that way? Why is there any opposite in our own minds to what our own desires are?
- Film Directors Samuel Rixon; Madison Mckamey; Cobi Byrne
- DOP Madison Mckamey
- Film Editor Cobi Byrne
- Film Colorist Dylan Hageman
- Steadicam Sawyer Oubre
- 1st AC Nile Garcia
- 2nd AC Hailey Port
- Gaffer Jonathan Alvarado
- Key Grip Vuk Lungulovk
- Digitech Mark Jayson Quines
- 1st Photo Assist Randy Tran
- 2nd Photo Assist Julian Fabrigas
- Creative Consultant Bei at POUR LUI Creative
- Photo Retoucher Boyan at POUR LUI Creative
- Fashion Assist Alana Sardo
- Line Producer Eonnam Kim
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