In October 2021, when “Rust” star and producer Alec Baldwin accidentally shot and killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins with a pistol containing live ammunition that should not have been on a movie set, a lot of actors nowhere near that incident in New Mexico thought a lot of things.
For Michael Shannon, “the main thing was: This is what comes of making a movie on the cheap.”
A Chicago stage veteran and two-time Academy Award nominee for supporting performances in “Revolutionary Road” (2008) and “Nocturnal Animals” (2016), Shannon, the co-star of Showtime’s “George & Tammy” and the recent, bullet-strewn theatrical feature “Bullet Train,” has played his share of gun-wielding hit men, lawmen and underworld adversaries in a prolific 31-year career in film and television.
He has worked around massive, deafening explosions coupled with hazard-prone strafing from the air (“Pearl Harbor,” one of two Michael Bay projects he’s in). He has followed gun safety protocols on low-budget, medium-sized and nine-figure film projects. “Fastidious” is his word for the on-set armorers he has worked with. He has, he says, also seen younger fellow actors “do some crazy, stupid (stuff) with guns over the years on set. Like it’s no big deal.”