Michael Shannon Shoving Coins Up His Nose Is Scarier Than Any Of His Movie Roles

Michael Shannon has been nominated for two Academy Awards across his incredibly interesting career: once in Revolutionary Road for playing a mentally disturbed young man fond of screaming uncomfortable truths in the faces of Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet; and again last year for Nocturnal Animals, where he played an oddball cop who was dying but was also deeply intense. I’m going to tell you right now that neither one of those performances was as award-worthy as what Shannon has done in his Vanity Fair secret-talents video. Observe as this national treasure attempts to shove two dollars in coins up his nose:

The entire video is a thing of beauty. The barely decipherable muttering! The formal wear! The piano-playing that goes entirely unmentioned but gives a video about shoving dirty change up your schnozz an air of brandy-sipping class and elegance! “You should not do this,” Shannon mumbles as he starts placing quarters, nickels, and dimes up his nose.

Why is he doing this, you ask? Because … the Vanity Fair video team asked nicely? VF has been doing a series of secret-talent videos recently. You may have seen Oprah Winfrey showing the best way to get a poop stain out of a rug, or Nicole Kidman demonstrate her fondness for eating bugs. This is all real and not in any way a massive prank on the American video-content-consuming public.

But it’s Shannon’s deadpan, slightly unsettling manner as he methodically loads his beak up with pocket change (the literal dirtiest thing on the planet this side of a subway pole), that stands as the apex of celebrity behavior in 2018. He may be willing to do pretty much anything for your attention, but he’s sure as hell gonna make you feel super weird about it afterwards.