Interesting little article on the actor who plays Nelson Van Alden on "Boardwalk Empire"

MICHAEL SHANNON arrived at Frankies Spuntino in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, and avoided the busy back room, preferring to slip into a lone table up front. But at 6 foot 4 with a giant noggin topped off by a brow that could serve as a balcony, he’s tough to miss. Add in the fact that he has been nominated for an Academy Award (“Revolutionary Road”), is currently starring in a bravura one-man show off Broadway (“Mistakes Were Made”) and finished a season as a vividly conflicted character in a big cable series (HBO’s “Boardwalk Empire”), and his days of landing unnoticed are over. The table in front hangs out over the sidewalk, with a kind of proscenium above it, and passing Brooklynites couldn’t help but stare: Oh yeah, that guy, the big, scary one.

Mr. Shannon didn’t seem to notice the looks, but he understands the short-hand, some of which derives from his role in “Revolutionary Road.” He played a hulking mental patient who bellowed truths amid the suburban banalities that overwhelmed the characters played by Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio. “Plenty of people are onto the emptiness,” he says at one point, “but it takes real guts to see the hopelessness.” Dialogue doesn’t get much darker than that, but it emerged naturally from Mr. Shannon.

“I’m just kind of odd,” he said, settling in as the food arrived. “There are dark forces in the world, and if you pay attention to what’s going on around you, you end up incorporating it into the storytelling. Maybe it’s some aspect of myself that’s coming through that people are seeing, that I am in fact a quiet psycho.” His gentle, nonpsycho smile suggests he finds humor in the typecasting.

“My dad used to say, ‘You have to become part of the machine to beat the machine,’ and there’s some validity in it,” he said. “But honestly, even when I’m inside the machine, you still see me. I stick out a little bit.” .....

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"When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies but the pack survives."
Winter is Coming

Now this is the Law of the Jungle—as old and as true as the sky; And the wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the wolf that shall break it must die.
As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk, the Law runneth forward and back; For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.