Michael Shannon: 'I'm not trying to exorcise any demons'

'If I were God," says Michael Shannon, "I would just be up there scratching my head, thinking: what the hell am I supposed to do with this? For everyone helping an old lady across the street, there's someone else bludgeoning a person to death. And sometimes they're the same. How can He separate us all out?" He stares at his latte, confounded.

The plight of the Almighty does not trouble everyone. But Shannon's sense of empathy extends even to those whose existence he doubts. Or loathes. The day we meet, he is shaken by shots of the dying Gaddafi. "It's just amazing how destructive we're capable of being." He believes vehemently in the capacity for kindness.

It is this sensitivity that makes him such a singular actor. Soon he will be a superstar – when he plays the baddie General Zod in Man of Steel, the revamped Superman. So far he has specialised in men desperate to do the right thing: incontinent truth-tellers, regardless of the fallout. Cracked zealots such as the prohibition agent in Boardwalk Empire, erect and chilly as a tombstone. Or zealous crackpots such as the electroshock patient in Revolutionary Road, who tells the pregnant April Wheeler (Kate Winslet): "I'm just about the sorriest bastard I know. But I am glad of one thing: I'm glad I'm not gonna be that kid."    More