The veteran character actor looks back on years of side jobs and failed auditions, learning to make the most of parts of any size and landing the role of a lifetime \u2014 for which he is now favored to win the best supporting actor Oscar \u2014 in Martin McDonagh\u2019s acclaimed dramedy.
\n“I’ve turned down a lot of money because I can’t do it for just the money,” the veteran character actor Sam Rockwell says as we sit down at the Fess Parker DoubleTree Hotel in Santa Barbara to record an episode of The Hollywood Reporter’s ‘Awards Chatter’ podcast. The 49-year-old “actors’ actor,” who has been in the business for 30 years, is nominated for an Oscar this year for the first time \u2014 in the best supporting actor category \u2014 for his portrayal of a bigoted and raging Midwestern cop in Martin McDonagh’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, and he is the heavy favorite to win. He continues, “Money’s part of the equation, but you’ve gotta have more than just that.”<\/p>\n
Rockwell was born in San Francisco to struggling actors who split not long after he was born. He acted for the first time at the age of 10 (opposite his mother in a little sketch) and says that, even then, he liked “the lifestyle” and “the adventure of the actor’s life \u2014 even the struggling actor’s life.” At 18, after graduating from a performing arts high school in the Bay Area, he moved to New York to pursue acting professionally, and for the next five years he worked a slew of odd-jobs in order to pay his bills, while also auditioning on the side. While Rockwell came close to booking major parts in 1989’s\u00a0Dead Poets Society<\/em>\u00a0and 1992’s\u00a0Scent of a Woman<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Unforgiven,\u00a0<\/em>as well as TV’s\u00a0ER<\/em>\u00a0(the\u00a0Noah Wyle<\/strong>\u00a0role), he kept missing the final cut. And so, at 23, he decided to begin formally studying his craft \u2014 with Meisner technique teachers\u00a0William Esper<\/strong>,\u00a0Maggie Flanagan<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0Terry Knickerbocker<\/strong>\u00a0\u2014 in the hope of upping his game.<\/p>\n Rockwell’s first “break,” at least in a limited way, was getting cast \u2014 and then blowing people away with his work \u2014 in 1996’s\u00a0Box of Moonlight<\/em>, which proved a sensation at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival.\u00a0Harvey Weinstein<\/strong>\u00a0called Rockwell “a movie star” and the whole experience, Rockwell says, “did change stuff.” (The chance to play a deranged death-row prisoner in 1999’s\u00a0The Green Mile<\/em>\u00a0may have come out of that brief period of heat.) But, as would happen many times with many films containing strong Rockwell performances \u2014 2007’s\u00a0Snow Angels<\/em>, 2008’s\u00a0Choke<\/em>\u00a0and 2009’s\u00a0The Winning Season<\/em>\u00a0and, especially,\u00a0Moon<\/em>, among others \u2014 the film essentially got lost, taking his momentum went with it. “You do the best you can,” the actor says philosophically, while acknowledging that “it’s depressing” when good work doesn’t get seen.<\/p>\n Interestingly, many of Rockwell’s best opportunities over the years have come from fellow actors who recognized and respected what he was capable of and then, when they decided to step behind the camera, enlisted him to be part of their films. That dynamic prompted calls from the likes of\u00a0George Clooney<\/strong>\u00a0(2002’s\u00a0Confessions of a Dangerous Mind<\/em>),\u00a0Ron Howard<\/strong>\u00a0(2008’s\u00a0Frost\/Nixon<\/em>),\u00a0Tony Goldwyn<\/strong>\u00a0(2010’s\u00a0Conviction<\/em>),\u00a0Clark Gregg<\/strong>\u00a0(Choke<\/em>),\u00a0Jon Favreau<\/strong>\u00a0(2010’s\u00a0Iron Man 2<\/em>\u00a0and 2011’s\u00a0Cowboys & Aliens<\/em>),\u00a0Nat Faxon<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0Jim Rash<\/strong>\u00a0(2013’s\u00a0The Way Way Back<\/em>),\u00a0Robin Wright<\/strong>\u00a0(2017’s short film\u00a0The Dark of Night<\/em>) and\u00a0Ethan Hawke<\/strong>\u00a0(the forthcoming\u00a0Blaze<\/em>).<\/p>\n Nobody, however, quite “got” Rockwell as much as McDonagh, the Irish-born English playwright-turned-filmmaker who cast Rockwell in his 2010 Broadway production\u00a0A Behanding in Spokane<\/em>, 2012 film\u00a0Seven Psychopaths<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Three Billboards<\/em>, and who has called him “the greatest actor of his generation.” Rockwell, in turn, says, “I’m a very lucky man to have met Martin McDonagh,” emphasizing that the filmmaker has a style and sensibility unlike anyone else’s, just like Tarantino and other masters. Rockwell recalls that when he first read the script for\u00a0Three Billboards<\/em>, “It was like, ‘Holy shit!'” The actor knew the material was great, but admits that he didn’t immediately recognize the potential of the part of Officer Dixon, the character he eventually played, who he initially saw as a bumbling fool. But with time and work, he came to recognize Dixon as a complex man filled with rage and hatred and “overenthusiastic young cop energy,” who’s “got a lot of therapy to do.”<\/p>\n Three Billboards<\/em>‘ lead,\u00a0Frances McDormand<\/strong>, channeled\u00a0John Wayne<\/strong>\u00a0in her performance. (In Rockwell’s view, “Frances’ character is sort of a working-class Wonder Woman, in a sense, a vigilante anti-hero.”) Rockwell, for his part, says, “My arc was more Barney Fife turns into Travis Bickle, I suppose.” He prepared for the challenge by working on his character’s accent with a dialect coach using audio recordings of cops in Southern Missouri; participating in ride-alongs with cops in Los Angeles and Missouri; and meeting with burn victims. The actor then shot his scenes in the summer of 2016. The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival last August, and won the audience award at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. Over the months since, Rockwell \u2014 during breaks from playing\u00a0George W. Bush<\/strong>\u00a0in\u00a0Adam McKay<\/strong>‘s forthcoming dramedy\u00a0Backseat<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 has received best supporting actor Critics\u2019 Choice, Screen Actors Guild, Golden Globe and BAFTA awards. On Sunday, he may add one more statuette to his collection.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Source:\u00a0hollywoodreporter.com<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The veteran character actor looks back on years of side jobs and failed auditions, learning to make the most of parts of any size and landing the role of a lifetime \u2014 for which he is now favored to win the best supporting actor Oscar \u2014 in Martin McDonagh\u2019s acclaimed ...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":78675,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4545],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"acf":false,"yoast_head":"\n