Sam Rockwell (born November 5, 1968) is an American actor. He is known for appearing in independent films and portraying a wide variety of roles both comedic and dramatic in films such as Lawn Dogs (1997), The Green Mile (1999), Galaxy Quest (1999), Charlie's Angels (2000), Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002), Matchstick Men (2003), The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005), Moon (2009), Frost/Nixon (2008), Iron Man 2 (2010), Conviction (2010), Cowboys & Aliens (2011), Seven Psychopaths (2012), The Way, Way Back (2013), Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017), Vice (2018), Jojo Rabbit (2019), Richard Jewell (2019), and The Best of Enemies (2019).
Rockwell won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for Martin McDonagh's Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017). and was nominated the following year for portraying George W. Bush in Adam McKay's Vice (2018). In 2019, he portrayed Bob Fosse in the FX biographical miniseries Fosse/Verdon, earning him a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie. In 2022 he received his first Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Play for his performance in the Broadway revival of David Mamet's American Buffalo. His other stage performances include Zoo Story (2001), A Behanding in Spokane (2010) and Fool for Love (2015).
Early life and education
Rockwell was born November 5, 1968, in Daly City, California. He is the only child of actors Pete Rockwell and Penny Hess. After their divorce when he was five, he was raised by his father in San Francisco, and spent his summers with his mother in New York. At age 10, he made a brief stage appearance playing Humphrey Bogart in an East Village improv comedy sketch with his mother.
He started high school at the San Francisco School of the Arts with Margaret Cho and Aisha Tyler, but received his high school diploma from Urban Pioneers, an Outward Bound-style alternative school. Rockwell explained, "I just wanted to get stoned, flirt with girls, go to parties." The school "had a reputation as a place stoners went because it was easy to graduate." The school helped him regain an interest in performing. After appearing in an independent film during his senior year, he moved to New York to pursue an acting career. He later enrolled in the Professional Actor Training Program at the William Esper Studio in New York.
Career
Early films
After his debut role in the controversial horror film Clownhouse in 1989, which he filmed while living in San Francisco, he moved to New York and trained at the William Esper Studios with teacher William Esper. His career slowly gained momentum in the early 1990s, when he alternated between small-screen guest spots in TV series like The Equalizer, NYPD Blue and Law & Order and small roles in films such as Last Exit to Brooklyn and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He also appeared as the title character in The Search for One-eye Jimmy (1994). During this time, Rockwell worked in restaurants as a busboy and delivered burritos by bicycle. At one point, Rockwell even worked as a private detective's assistant. "I tailed a chick who was having an affair and took pictures of her at this motel", he told Rolling Stone in 2002. "It was pretty sleazy." A well-paying Miller commercial in 1994 finally allowed him to pursue acting full-time.
The turning point in Rockwell's career was Tom DiCillo's film Box of Moonlight (1996), in which he played an eccentric man-child who dresses like Davy Crockett and lives in an isolated mobile home. The ensuing acclaim put him front and center with casting agents and newfound fans alike, with Rockwell himself acknowledging that "That film was definitely a turning point...I was sort of put on some independent film map after 10 years in New York."
He also received strong reviews for the film Lawn Dogs (1997), where he played a working-class lawn mower who befriends a wealthy 10-year-old girl (Mischa Barton) in an upper-class gated community in Kentucky; Rockwell's performance won him Best Actor honors at both the Montreal World Film Festival and the Catalan International Film Festival. In 1999, Rockwell played the deranged prisoner William "Wild Bill" Wharton in the Stephen King prison drama The Green Mile. At the time of the film's shooting, Rockwell explained why he was attracted to playing such unlikable characters. He said, "I like that dark stuff. I think heroes should be flawed. There's a bit of self-loathing in there, and a bit of anger... But after this, I've really got to play some lawyers, or a British aristocrat, or they'll put a label on me."