The admired actor talks to Patrick Smith about the painful truths of Eugene O’Neill, the treatment of Zack Snyder, and his issue with autograph hunters
ichael Shannon is musing about his return to theatre, in a low Midwestern drawl that rumbles along like a Chevy. “There are times on stage where it seems like it’s just kind of as fulfilling as life gets…” the star of Man of Steel and Boardwalk Empire tells me, “and there are times where you do not want to be in front of 300 strangers, torturing yourself… and everything in between. But when it hits, it’s a very unique feeling. You can’t find it out walking down the street, or doing anything else. It’s a religious feeling.”
We’re in his cramped dressing room at the Almeida, where Shannon is playing Eugene O’Neill’s haunted alcoholic Jim Tyrone in A Moon for the Misbegotten. His face is all shadowy hollows and sharp angles, brow permanently furrowed. Some roles have a powerful emotional effect on him, he admits, but he tries hard to shed them afterwards. “If I were still invested in every part I ever played in my life, I’d probably be in a straitjacket,” he says….