Oscars 2009: Meet the Nominees You’ve Never Heard Of

4. MICHAEL SHANNON 
Best Supporting Actor Nominee
Revolutionary Road

He might win an Oscar for … his scene-stealing Revolutionary Road performance as John Givings, a brilliant mathematician who’s suffered a breakdown. While on break from the mental institution, his mother invites him to meet her friends Frank (Leonardo DiCaprio) and April Wheeler (Kate Winslet), who are struggling with the confines of suburban living in ‘50s Connecticut. Givings’ observations of their relationships are both encouraging — and extremely judgmental. 
 
He holds his own … with critics like Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers, who says, “Playing the role like a heat-seeking missile that targets hypocrisy, the volcanic Shannon scores a knockout.” 

You should know that … Shannon climbed the Hollywood food chain without a lick of formal training or even an acting coach. Instead, he did it the old-fashioned way: taking small gigs until he finally broke out into the big time. 

He stumbled into acting as a kid in Lexington, Kansas, trying to avoid sports at school. Joining up with the speech team he was given his first monologue — a piece from Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegone Days about a boy who eats his own boogers. “I studied that, and would practice it in my bedroom,” he told the Hollywood Interview. “I never got to compete with it, because I was a substitute, and no one ever missed any of the meets, so I only performed it in my bedroom.”

After bouncing back and forth between his mom’s place in Lexington and his dad’s house in Chicago (his parents divorced when he was young), he eventually settled in the Windy City, “doing plays in little storefronts, basements … at the very bottom.”

Once entrenched in the acting scene, he dropped out of school at 16 and went pro with his first play Winterset at the Illinois Theater Center. He still remembers reading the reviews from his early efforts. One said: “Michael Shannon is a semi-attractive youngster who thinks acting is flapping his arms like a bird and rubbing his eyebrows.” As hee told New York Magazine. “Yeah. The next night, I taped my arms to my sides.”

He went on to join Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theater Company and co-founded Red Orchid Theater, creating a close working relationship with Tracy Letts, a Tony- and Pulitzer-winning actor/playwright, who he met during his second play, Fun and Nobody.

“He was obviously very raw,” Letts told New York of his first time working with Shannon. “He was estranged from his family and was maybe spending some nights in the park. He seemed to be at loose ends in his life, and he just threw all his psychic energy into this role. And you couldn’t take your eyes off him.”

As he gained high profile stage work in Chicago, New York and London (including Letts’ Killer Joe, Man from Nebraska and Bug), Shannon landed more film jobs as well. Small parts in Cecil B. Demented, Pearl Harbor and 8 Mile were followed by bigger roles in Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center, Bug and Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead.

His time spent sharpening his acting skills paid off. During his Revolutionary Road audition, the casting director — who was performing opposite him as his mother –told him she was personally wounded by his performance.

“I guess for years and years, I’ve been wanting to tell my mother to shut up, and I finally got an opportunity to do it,” he told New York. “One of the great things about acting is you can do things that in real life would get you in trouble. I think that’s something I figured out pretty early on. ’Cause I had some issues.”

Now, as the countdown to Oscar begins, Shannon is keeping his wits about him thanks to some advice from co-star and fellow nominee Kate Winslet (nominated for The Reader).

“When you are done [with the Oscars], go back and remember you are a normal person and you need another job,” Winslet told him. “Don’t start thinking you are incredible because it is really just this individual performance. My next movie could be terrible and you could all be saying, ‘What happened to him? He had so much potential.’ So just keep your wits about you.”

He confesses … “You have a lot of wind inside of you,” he told New York. “Acting is like a kite.”

He’s unstoppable … with his upcoming role in Martin Scorsese’s pilot episode of Empire Boardwalk. He plays a Treasury Department agent named Van Alden alongside Vincent Piazza, Steve Buscemi and Michael Pitt. The HBO series, based on a book by Nelson Johnson, will center on a liquor distribution ring helmed by Nucky Johnson (Buscemi) at the onset of Prohibition.

Also in the works are The Missing Person, about a private detective trailing a 9/11 victim who was previously presumed dead, The Greatest, the story of a young girl and her family thrown into chaos after the loss of their son and a remake of 13. Shannon stars alongside Mickey Rourke, 50 Cent, Jason Statham and other high profile stars in the gangster flick about men who gamble with other men’s lives.

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