When the script calls for unhinged but understated, Shannon is quickly becoming the go-to guy. Pitched somewhere between the mumbling paranoia of Joaquin Phoenix and the jittery unpredictability of The Joker, your typical Shannon role takes 'there's something not quite right about that man' to an art form. And although his CV stretches as far back as Pearl Harbor, Tigerland and Vanilla Sky, it was his wide-eyed portrayal of Peter Evans in William Friedkin's 2006 sci-fi thriller Bug that made us sit up and take notice. Since then he's stolen a scene from Leonardo Dicaprio and Kate Winslet (no mean feat) as the troubled mathematician of Revolutionary Road, and, more prominently, played a family man tormented by visions of a terrible storm in Take Shelter. This nervous intensity led him to a striking performance in the otherwise disappointing Herzog/Lynch collaboration My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done? (in which he played a man convicted of killing his mother) before he too was catapulted from cult icon to comic book villain; playing General Zod in the upcoming Man Of Steel.