Michael Shannon Quotes

I got better as an actor, and still I'm getting better. That's only been possible because there's always been work.

Stage is definitely my home first and foremost - I still feel like I'm yet to earn my stripes on set.

I was lucky enough to be able to grow and mature in a natural way as an actress.

If you're in your early twenties, don't put so much importance on the money, on the raise. Getting an extra thousand dollars a year is okay, but the real thing is the responsibility and the power and the experience that you're learning.

Working is the best way to understand and grow, as an actor, in my opinion. That's been my experience.

I believe over the last six years now, I've been learning in between actual acting moments on the show.

I have just been lucky to get challenging characters every time.

I did two episodes of 'The Walking Dead,' and it was enough to have time to get in there and really get the meat of it, but also then move on and take that experience and bring it into the next one. It was a great stepping stone.

I always found new challenges in my career.

I always felt that, as an actor, I should play a variety of roles rather than just sticking to one kind & getting typecast.

When you perform in your first film, it adds a lot to your career graph. The journey becomes easy.

I've been going to school, did theater for a long time, been plugging away for 10, 15 years. I was told earlier in my career, it's all laying track... one day, all that track is going to come together in some way, and it has.

I am struck by the fact that the more slowly trees grow at first, the sounder they are at the core, and I think that the same is true of human beings. We do not wish to see children precocious, making great strides in their early years like sprouts, producing a soft and perishable timber, but better if they expand slowly at first, as if contending with difficulties, and so are solidified and perfected. Such trees continue to expand with nearly equal rapidity to extreme old age.

I think I made some mistakes, in different areas, but it's great to be working in a show again now, many years down the track. I have worked in many other different shows in Australia and I've been able to learn from my mistakes. I'm lucky that I made those mistakes early on in Australia, and I definitely won't make them again in the States, but you've got to learn that stuff.

I would never accept a role that wasn't going to stretch me or challenge me in some way. I'd say Holy Smoke! probably did that more than anything I'd ever done. It took me to places I didn't actually know I could go to, and that's what I want my career to be all about.

All real progress must be slow.

I've been acting for many years, and the more you do, the more confidence you get about "this is my career and this is what I'm going to be doing."

To grow: that is your deepest and truest need when you say, 'I want to be an actor.'

I've done seven movies in eight years, and with each movie I feel like I'm learning a lot. I'm still young-ish, so I still feel like I'm in the zone of learning and creating. Those are the perfect places to do that. And in a weird way, you have a lot of freedom.

There's so much I want to do as an actor. I feel like there's so much more that I want to achieve and that I can achieve.

I feel like I've found my voice in the actor's business. Because when you first get out of school and you're looking for jobs, you don't want to rock the boat - you can't rock the boat. You'll get known for being that sassy girl that, like, has no résumé and no one wants to work with her. But now, I'm "proven," at least in the television world, and hopefully in the theater world. I'm working on the film world. Unfortunately, it takes a while to build that kind of street cred. It's been recently that I even started to have more confidence in myself.

All good work is done the way ants do things: Little by little.

Usually being a young actor, you've got to go through certain levels of hierarchy, going through bit parts and extra roles and then kind of progressing up the food chain and having the size of your roles grow in that sense.

Best to start at the bottom & gradually climb up. It's much more fun, too.

With my career in general, I feel like I'm finally getting to do the roles that I've always wanted to do. It's a slow build; you can't ever get the roles that you want in the beginning of your career because you don't have the buzz or the heat, or whatever the hell it is you need for the agents and the studios to be happy.