Michael Shannon (Reuters file photo)

Demented as some of his characters are, Michael Shannon isn't being paranoid. People really are watching him.

It's a relative recent feeling for the 37-year-old stage and indie-cinema veteran who received raves -- and an Oscar nomination -- for his performance as Leonardo DiCaprio's acerbic, unstable neighbour in 2009's Revolutionary Road.

Certainly Shannon's current workload illustrates how in-demand he is.

There's his ongoing role as an unbalanced federal agent on HBO's Boardwalk Empire, for one, as well as the two films he has out this fall: Machine Gun Preacher and Take Shelter, in which he stars as a man plagued by apocalyptic visions. Take Shelter opens in Toronto and Vancouver next Friday. In the pipeline, he's wrapped the thriller Premium Rush with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and is presently shooting Man of Steel, the Superman reboot in which he stars as arch-nemesis General Zod.

"It can be a little disorienting sometimes. I went out of the first season of Boardwalk into Take Shelter, then Machine Gun Preacher, then Premium Rush. Then I did a movie called Return, which is playing the festival circuit, worked with (Tree of Life director) Terrence Malick for a couple days, did a play off-Broadway and the next thing I knew it was time to do season two. I showed up back at Boardwalk and thought, 'What just happened to me?'"

In Machine Gun Preacher, now playing in limited release in Canada, he co-stars as Donnie, a composite character based on three or four close friends of Sam Childers (Gerard Butler), the real-life biker who, after becoming a born-again Christian, travelled to Africa to protect orphaned victims of that region's civil wars.

"It was a new opportunity for me to explore friendship and a buddy relationship," Shannon says. "A lot of time my characters are alone. It was fun to show up and have a buddy, no matter how dark or nefarious our activities might be. Sam has known a lot of people that have come to a hard end. If anything, I like to imagine Donnie as the essence of that - almost a ghost."

At first "nervous" to meet Childers, Shannon remembers being quickly put at ease.

"He was very warm. Anytime you're going to meet someone who's accomplished so much, it's going to make you feel inadequate. But he sat down right away and embraced me and said, 'I'm so glad you're doing this, I think you're going to get it, and this is what it means to me.'"

Far removed from the drama of Machine Gun Preacher, Man of Steel represents "a whole new ballgame," he acknowledges. Shannon, after all, is stepping into the boots of Terrence Stamp, who famously portrayed Zod in the Christopher Reeve movies.

Nevertheless, he says director Zack Snyder (300, Watchmen) "makes it a lot of fun. He runs a real loose set no matter how much pressure he might be feeling because of the budget and the expectations ... It's a lot of pressure. People have a lot of expectations."

And not just studio executives either.

Since filming began, surreptitiously-snapped photos of the production have been appearing online, even though the film doesn't open until June 2013.

"The thing I've learned about the fanboys is that they don't wait for you to be prepared for anything. They're already in the bushes, snapping photos of us and putting them online and dissecting the whole thing. But I think that kind of enthusiasm is great. It's better than nobody caring. You put all that work into something and everybody yawns or nobody bothers to come to the theatre -- that would be a lot more difficult to deal with."

Shannon delves into ‘complex’ Zod

For Michael Shannon, it was required reading if he was going to play General Zod opposite Henry Cavill's Superman in Man of Steel. Action Comics #1? Adventure Comics #283?

"I'm reading Ulysses S. Grant's memoirs. I'm reading those, trying to see what it's like to wake up everyday in those shoes," he says of the Civil War general and 18th U.S. president.

"For me, (Zod) is a very complex character. He doesn't have horns coming out of his head; he's not breathing fire. He's a citizen of a different civilization. He's from another planet. That's a lot to wrap my head around. And he's a general too. I've done a lot of military-themed work, but I've never been higher than a sergeant, so it's quite a promotion."

What's he learned so far?

"That (Grant's) memoirs are pretty dry. I'll get to the good part. I'm still at the part where he's telling all about his genealogy. I can't even get interested in my own genealogy. 'I had this second cousin and he lived in Ohio and sometimes he grew potatoes, but sometimes he grew carrots. And he got married to the woman who worked at the general store.'"

Man of Steel, which shoots around Vancouver through the fall and winter, arrives in theatres in June 2013.

kevin.williamson@sunmedia.ca

 

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