Michael Shanks Canadian Quotations

So I think at the start of the 3rd year, that's when the character became sort of more like myself than it was about the original interpretation.

I'd done a few jobs, but not much, and I'd come from a family that exercises caution when it comes to anything to do with job security.

I think the writing on the wall is definitely there this year that this is probably our last year.

I think I'd certainly be lying to say I would have wanted to play the character in somebody else's interpretation for 8 years that way.

We never thought the show would last this long.

You know, if it doesn't work, we can always cut it.

With network shows, writers can be so protective of every syllable.

There's one right now that's sort of a Canadian independent film that Don Davis and I are working to put together, and that's kind of a labor of love.

So already, you go from not having a job and thinking you're going to get fired after the pilot, to knowing that you've got a guaranteed job for 4 years.

By the end of last year we solved a lot of threads, and it's really good for this new way we're taking the show to really have these new people and these new energies, frankly.

It was nice, though, to have the long term benefit to be able to pare away those things and eventually make the character my own and put my own unique stamp.

It's fun to play the character and then watch him later.

I couldn't be playing him for this long if I didn't like him.

For some reason, it popped into my head the notion that a lot of the Next Generation cast in the long run of that show managed to step behind the camera.