(Lights! Camera! The Movies' Mandate for Change)
by Elizabeth Weitzman

An actor who puts all of himself into a role only to come up with someone completely different each time, he's refused to accept the compromises that might bring about the celebrity status that's eluded him thus far. So just what kind of man is Sam Rockwell? Puckish scamp (Box of Moonlight, 1997)? Sexy loner (Lawn Dogs, 1998)? Hapless fool (Safe Men, 1998)? There is no single answer to the question. Which is, no doubt, the only answer he'd want to hear.

ELIZABETH WEITZMAN: So what have you been up to since Safe Men?

SAM ROCKWELL: I played Flute - the guy who dresses up like a woman - in the Midsummer Night's Dream movie. After that I was the villain in The Green Mile. He's the quintessential white trash nightmare. Fake teeth, greasy hair, acne.

EW: Sounds very different from anything else you've done.

SR: It's really different. Usually I get cast as the baby-faced guy, so I was ready to play a villain. I really don't want to be categorized, but it's hard to remain versatile. Hollywood is just looking for the chance to reincarnate James Dean or get their next character actor for the bad guys.

EW: What would you like to do that you haven't done yet?

SR: I'd like to be an action hero, but I don't think they'd ever make me that type of leading man. I'm too quirky. If they put me in Speed 3, two days later they'd go, "Yep, we're gonna have to fire him now. Can we get someone more mainstream?"

I like to make weird choices. If you watch Paul Newman, or even Cary Grant, they weren't always thinking good things. Who knows what the hell Cary Grant was thinking? He could be smiling at a woman and having some really dirty, nasty thoughts. That's what made them interesting leading men.

EW: What do you think Hollywood's looking for in a hero today?

SR: I think it's changing some, with people like Ben Stiller. He's helping because he looks like a normal guy. He's still the exception, though. There are a lot of good actors out there - but the ones they're picking, it's like they're chiseled from marble.

Sometimes that's what you want; sometimes you want Spartacus. But why isn't John Turturro playing those parts? Take Conspiracy Theory [1997]. Now, Mel Gibson is great, but he's playing a taxi driver from New York! How many New York City taxi drivers look or sound at all like Mel Gibson? How about John Turturro for that part? But Hollywood would never do that. They just don't care about details, and detail is what makes great art. If you lose the details, the reality, the humility. . .

Look at Phil Hoffman's work in Happiness [1998]. This is brave work. This is a guy who doesn't care about his ab muscles.

EW: Have you felt a lot of pressure to look good?

SR: Definitely. Just like a woman, you know? It's the same thing. You start to feel older, and it gets a little frightening. It's a very scary business. The work itself keeps you sane. The rest of it is so superficial: Everybody thinks about trying to become a movie star. And if they tell you they don't, they're lying. Because if you've got the looks for the leading man parts, that'll get you the money. And money's power. And power gives you a choice.

That's what it all comes down to, ultimately - having a choice. I've been able to say no to things, to do plays and small movies, because I have a low overhead: I'm not married and my rent's cheap. I'm still living this bohemian lifestyle here. But it's getting a little boring, let me tell you. I'm ready to turn into a man now. I want to buy an apartment and have a girlfriend and a dog. I'm just sick of being the wandering, cigarette-smoking, coffee-drinking, broke artist.

EW: Will that be reflected in your choices? Are you going to move away from those twenty-something guy parts?

SR: I don't know. Not until I look it, I suppose. I really look a good seven years younger than I am. I'm not complaining about it; it used to bother me, but it's good because I'll work longer. But I can play Stanley Kowalski, or a British aristocrat. I just haven't yet, so nobody knows it.

EW: Do you think you could play one of those heavy-duty macho heroes?

SR: I think I could, but then that guy would be a villain. Heroes, to me, are men who are multidimensional. I think it's more interesting to see the hero not be perfect. What if you did Dirty Harry, and in the first scene he's going to the bathroom? But nobody wants to see Dirty Harry do that, and nobody wants to see Dirty Harry get scared. When the audience goes to a Dirty Harry movie - myself included - we're looking to see in Clint Eastwood everything that we're not.

Then there's the other extreme, like, say, Breaking the Waves [1996]. But I'm saying there's something in between. Like The Deer Hunter [1978]. I always wonder, if my friends and I had been in the Russian roulette scene, who would be De Niro, who would be John Savage, who would be Chris Walken? Who would be scared and who would be freaked out and who would be the man? Or would anybody be the man? And what does it really mean, to be 'the man'? What is a hero? De Niro's character, maybe he was the man at that moment, but maybe he's really all screwed up. Maybe if you're macho and you're the man, you go home and beat your wife. But those dimensions just aren't shown in so many movies today.

EW: What is a hero, to you?

SR: I've got a fantastic example for you: Remember that movie Heavy [1996]? That great actor, Pruitt Taylor Vince - he should have played the sheriff in Cop Land [1997].

EW: Instead of having an action star bulk up fifty pounds.

SR: Exactly. That would have been a movie. Instead of Stallone, you have this true fish out of water, not an action hero but your average Joe, and he's got to step up to the plate. You go to the movie and you think. Hey wait a minute, that's me! I'm fat and scared! That's beautiful. Because that's how we all feel, every day. I mean, that's how I feel when I go to the bank: Oh, shit, I can't do this, I'm fat and scared!

EW: Do you think independent film is helping to change perceptions of masculinity? Like the way Ben Stiller is playing leading men.

SR: It's a step in the right direction. I think guys like Steve Zahn should be leading men. Right now he's the funny guy, the comic relief, but he's got that Steve McQueen quality that nobody's tapped into yet.

EW: Is there a place for a Steve McQueen today, or was he strictly of another time?

SR: We just don't have those kinds of men today, McQueen came into his prime when he was much older, and now it's almost as though older actors are thrown away. It's really horrible. These days we've got Matthew McConaughey and Vince Vaughn, those guys. I like McConaughey, and Vaughn is very charismatic. But they need to be countered with other people. Where are the Jon Voights, the Gene Hackmans, the John Cazales? There are John Cazales out there, but they're playing character parts. I don't know why they can't play leading men. Because they've got a dark side, maybe.

EW: Vince Vaughn has a dark side.

SR: Yeah, but he cracks jokes, too.

EW: And he's got a nice chin.

SR: Chicks dig him. Really, if you want to be a movie star, it's about sex. I mean, I think girls want to fuck Ben Stiller.

EW: What makes you think so?

SR: He's got nice eyes, he's a good-looking guy. You gotta have some of that. I think there were women in the '70s who wanted to fuck Gene Hackman.

EW: What's the difference, then, between Hollywood's idea of masculinity in the McQueen era and this one?

SR: I think it mostly has to do with the youth thing. Damon, DiCaprio, Billy Crudup, they're all good. But that's not the point. The point is that everybody - including me - is young. The heroes I want to see are older. I want to see Jeff Bridges. Nicholson was - what? - nearly forty when he did One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest [1975]. Ahem needs to be a seasoned man, so that every time he looks down at you, you see the years of shit he's been through.

The '70s were really the peak of American films and I learned moral lessons from watching the leading men in films like Five Easy Pieces [1970] and Badlands [1973]. Like when Pacino dances in that scene in Serpico [1973]. He made a feminine choice in a masculine part; he gave it dimension, I discovered something about humanity just from watching that. I had to go, "Wow, that's cool." Does that make any sense?

EW: It makes a lot of sense, particularly since your roles never indicate a pressing urge to display how macho you are.

SR: Well, you haven't been in my apartment. It's leather everywhere. I've got spikes all over the place. No, not really.

EW: I know you spent most of your time with your dad after your parents separated when you were a kid. Do you think that strongly affected your ideas about masculinity?

SR: Both my parents were artists, so I grew up in a very unconventional, bohemian way. That suburban macho mentality seems so silly to me. I don't understand it at all. I'd visit my mom in the summer and there'd be wild, flamboyant men out of an Andy Warhol movie smoking dope on roofs, having sex, whatever. I saw some pretty crazy shit when I was younger, I guess. But most of the time my dad was really like my father and my mother. He has a very strong feminine side. All my best friends do, too. They're men who are not afraid to be sensitive.

EW: Do you think sensitivity is what's missing from Hollywood's heroes?

SR: Oh, yeah, sure. It's not in the script. It's just not there. Even in the most macho characters, vulnerability has to lie at the center. Watch De Niro in Cape Fear [1991]: Inside that character is a hurt little boy because that's where he started. That's the core, and everything stems from it.

EW: Is there any kind of man you wouldn't want to play?

SR: No, I want to do everybody. I want to do Hamlet, that's what I want to do.

EW: But that's a very complex man. What if you were given the male lead in the next Speed?

SR: I'd take it. But I'd play it like Hamlet.