Sam Rockwell wears Suit and Shirt Burberry. Tie Hermès. Shoes Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello.
Thirty years into his career, Oscar winner Sam Rockwell still feels like a secret weapon. He came up the way most serious actors do, in character parts, some indies, and a lot of theater. Then came Confessions of a Dangerous Mind , the 2002 movie that made him a leading man with edge, the one directors call when they need someone who can be funny and menacing in the same breath. This fall, he reunites with filmmaker Martin McDonagh for Wild Horse Nine , playing a CIA operative alongside John Malkovich in the politically fraught lead-up to Chile’s 1973 coup, a role that taps into the same register Rockwell spent his career perfecting. As he prepares to star in a stage version of A View from the Bridge , Rockwell met fellow actor Josh O’Connor for the first time, for a conversation about hell-raisers, the terror of memorizing lines, and yes, their process.
SAM ROCKWELL: Dude. I’m a huge fan, man. Huge, huge fan.
JOSH O’CONNOR: Me too, man. I watched Wild Horse Nine last night. It’s unreal. I love all of Martin McDonagh’s work, but this one, I was sobbing at the end. It’s incredible.
ROCKWELL: Thanks, man. I hav en’t seen it.
ROCKWELL: Yeah. I’ll see it in Venice maybe.
O’CONNOR: You’re about to start a play, right?
ROCKWELL: I am, and so are you. You’re doing Golden Boy , the Clifford Odets play about the boxer. You and I are busy people. I mean, you’re very busy. I’ve been busy lately, but that’s what happens. Five years go by, and then all of a sudden you’re like, “Oh, I’ve got to get back on the old boards.”
ROCKWELL: What was the play you did 12 years ago?
O’CONNOR: Sam, it was terrible. It was a Thomas Dekker play, an Elizabethan comedy called The Shoemaker’s Holiday . I did a bit of research about it, and the Elizabethan reviews were like, “It wasn’t funny in the Elizabethan days.” It wasn’t received well then.
ROCKWELL: Oh, fabulous. So is it Restoration?
O’CONNOR: It doesn’t quite make it for Restoration.
ROCKWELL: It’s more of a The Importance of Being Earnest kind of thing?
O’CONNOR: Not even that. It was essentially about a very upper- class aristocrat who pretends to be a Dutch shoemaker to win the favor of a woman.
O’CONNOR: The production was ter rible, but I had so much fun. You’re doing A View from the Bridge , right?
ROCKWELL: Yeah. Boy, watch out. Get the diapers. It’s a terrifying endeavor. I did a little work on it over Christmas, but I kind of let it go and did this movie, and now it’s go-time.
O’CONNOR: Presumably you’re going to be doing press for the movie at the same time?
ROCKWELL: Yeah, I think my understudy’s going to have to go on for three performances. I don’t know.
O’CONNOR: That’s great for the understudy.
O’CONNOR: You’ve done three mov ies with Martin?
ROCKWELL: The play was with Anthony Mackie , Zoe Kazan , and Christopher Walken , called A Behanding in Spokane . Strange one.
O’CONNOR: And you did that before the movie?
ROCKWELL: We did that first, which is how I got to know Chris Walken, and then we did Seven Psychopaths with Colin [Farrell] and Woody [Harrelson] and Tom Waits , who’s in Wild Horse Nine , too. Getting to know these legends is—
O’CONNOR: It’s surreal. That Tom Waits scene is so moving. Something I realized Martin does so incredibly well is making you feel a lot with very little. It’s every thing underneath his writing that’s so painful.
ROCKWELL: I know, it’s like bro mance [Harold] Pinter or some thing. Martin is such a genius with words. This movie is very much like a play, and John [Malkovich] and I are both stage actors. John is one of my heroes, and work ing with him was incredible. He wanted to run lines on weekends, so we would run lines and he would tell me Steppenwolf stories and stories about True West . You ever see True West on YouTube?
ROCKWELL: That made his career. And then I don’t know if you’ve seen the production of Death of a Salesman where he played Biff Loman and Dustin Hoffman played Willy Loman—
ROCKWELL: It’s a film of the Broadway production. John’s got a wig on and he’s very skinny. It’s just an extraordinary perfor mance. I saw it in high school, on my little TV, when I was preparing a monologue. It really changed me at a point when I was debating if I was going to do this as a career.
ROCKWELL: I think I was about 18. I got this weird movie and then I went to New York and became an actor. Oh, I watched an inter view with you and Jessie Buckley talking about how you worked in restaurants. I did that too.
O’CONNOR: Yeah. For me, those years of working in a restaurant and auditioning, and then doing a play, which was the golden ticket, were my favorite years. Best years of my career. I was so content. I was so excited and happy.
ROCKWELL: Yeah, it’s an exciting time. That’s kind of the old-school way to do it, to go from theater to film. That’s the way it happened with Gary Oldman and Daniel Day-Lewis and those guys. I came through both independent film and theater, but I don’t think kids do that as much in America. I don’t know about England. What’s the norm?
O’CONNOR: I think it’s changing. The U.K. system is different. I know you guys have drama schools, right?
ROCKWELL: Yeah. We have a lot of good conservatories like NYU, Yale, and Juilliard, but I studied the Meisner technique for two years, and that was my formal training. I did some voice work on the side later, because I wanted to do more theater, but I didn’t go to a conservatory so I didn’t have the whole thing like you did.
O’CONNOR: A lot of these drama schools are kind of outdated. I mean, we didn’t talk about how to do film or television once. I did three years and it was just theater. It was an education in acting for stage, studying texts, and doing the Shakespeare thing. Learning how to be on a film set was some thing you did on the job.
ROCKWELL: It seems like you and Jessie did it the right way. There’s a kind of apprenticeship.
O’CONNOR: All my heroes, and I really want to know who your heroes were, were they the hell-raisers, the drunks—
O’CONNOR: O’Toole, Richard Harris, Richard Burton, Oliver Reed. Those guys started out as the assistant costume guy. Then they joined the company, got the small part, then the bigger part, and then they’re going around the U.K. That was always the dream.
ROCKWELL: Have you seen that documentary on O’Toole?
ROCKWELL: Oh, it’s incredible. All his ex-wives talking about him.
O’CONNOR: I’m getting so much material from you.
ROCKWELL: I think those guys are the same as guys like Chris Walken and Dustin Hoffman. The thing I say about Chris Walken is the rea son his Pulp Fiction monologue is so effective is because he’d already done Hamlet twice. He did Romeo and Juliet twice. He did Tennessee Williams. He did [A] Streetcar [Named Desire] , he did Coriolanus , so by the time he gets to the Pulp Fiction monologue, he’s already tuned up. It’s kind of like how I did American Buffalo , and by the time I got to The White Lotus , I was tuned up. Woody Harrelson comes from theater, too. I think theater train ing kind of trumps all, and you can learn all the weird shit that hap pens on film sets, which, as you know, is very strange because you have to deal with things you can’t teach in an acting class.
O’CONNOR: I don’t want to ask “what’s your process,” because that’s kind of an ugly question, but what’s your process?
ROCKWELL: [Laughs] Mine is kind of like throwing spaghetti at the wall ’til it sticks. “Is that working? That’s not working. Okay, let’s try that other wall.” A lot of my stuff comes out of fear, because I want to be prepared. You’ve just got to learn the fucking thing. How do you fucking learn lines, man? It’s terrifying. I always forget how to do it.
O’CONNOR: I always forget. I’m just browsing every now and then and I’m like, “I’ll learn it vicariously. It will embed in my head if I just look at it.” I’ll make my scripts look pretty, and there’ll be plenty of thoughts and processes going on, so to other people it looks like—
ROCKWELL: Little smiley faces and stuff. Maybe a sad face.
O’CONNOR: Yeah, but really it’s just avoiding the inevitable, which is, “Learn the fucking lines.”
O’CONNOR: With Wild Horse Nine , are you approaching it the same way you would a play, do you reckon?
ROCKWELL: John and I just ran it over and over again. But god, it takes forever. As you get older, your brain goes soft.
O’CONNOR: My brain is already soft. [Laughs]
O’CONNOR: No, my brain is useless alone. I do the same thing every time. I’m reaching out to friends in the industry like, “What do you do?” And they’re always like, “You should have figured this out by now.”
O’CONNOR: Speaking of Malkovich, is he a Meisner guy?
ROCKWELL: He does have a process, obviously, but I think he would tell a story that he just came out of a cave and started acting or some thing. The thing about Malkovich is he has this incredible gorilla masculinity, but he also has almost a ballerina femininity, and that’s what makes him fascinating.
ROCKWELL: I mean that as a per son, he has an incredibly feminine side and also a Neanderthal mas culine side. He has both.
O’CONNOR: I see that in this movie. With his character, but also with yours. There’s this masculine duality of CIA agents and how many people they’ve killed that gets thrown into relief against the beautiful softness of male compan ionship and friendship.
ROCKWELL: Totally, which is kind of a theme with Martin. He likes a bromance. You’re a really great actor. I mean, you’re Prince Charles, and that’s a lot of research. And then in Challengers , you’re doing an American accent and you got to play some tennis. I mean, that’s a lot of shit. You’ve been kicking some ass.
O’CONNOR: I don’t know if you feel the same, but research is the bit I’m really into.
O’CONNOR: I’m sort of cosplaying having different jobs. I like librar ies, for instance. I love going into a library and picking out books, finding bits of information, then writing them down. It feels like you’re a journalist, I guess.
O’CONNOR: I love learning. That feels like one of my favorite gifts of doing this job, these little nuggets of skills you can pick up.
ROCKWELL: In Challengers , you were sort of the bad boy, but you had a relaxation. Kind of a James Dean, Cool Hand Luke kind of thing. I don’t know how you worked on that, if you watched other actors on film like Marlon Brando—
O’CONNOR: At drama school we had a teacher come to do an introduc tion to Meisner, and I remember him describing performance on film and feeling kind of upset, because I thought, “Now that I have this little knowledge, it’s going to affect how I receive per formance in film.” Now I watch a performance like yours, and I can settle in and get lost in something, but I will always be going, “Oh fuck, that’s great, and I’m going to steal it.” Maybe we all do that to some extent.
ROCKWELL: I do the same thing, and I think you can steal from everybody. I call it “action shop ping.” You can go like, “Oh, I’m going to take that action.” You ever see Kramer vs. Kramer ?
ROCKWELL: Hamlet says, “Fie, fie, upon her,” and I looked it up in the glossary, and it said it’s an outburst of shame, and then I was like, “Well, how am I going to do that?” Then I thought of this moment in Kramer vs. Kramer where Dustin Hoffman’s getting fired, and he’s got to go to court the next day to get his son. He says to his boss, “I have to go to court tomorrow and get my son. If I don’t have a job, I don’t have a chance in hell.” And the boss says, “I know. I’m really sorry.” He says, “Shame on you. Shame on you. Shame on you.” So when I did “Fie upon,” I thought of that, and actively said, “Shame, fie upon a foh.” I don’t know what the fie or foh means, so I have to make it active.
ROCKWELL: I don’t, but I think I should. It’s a very useful rehearsal tool. I think sometimes in a rehearsal, people might think you’re ad-libbing, and they think, “It’s Arthur Miller . You can’t ad-lib.” But it’s not ad-libbing. It’s paraphrasing. I think it’s a way to personalize the material, and it’s an underused tool. With something like Chekhov, and espe cially Shakespeare, you have to do that. Why not do it with Tennessee Williams? Even Clifford Odets is antiquated, right? I mean, the lan guage is antiquated, all that “gee whiz” stuff.
ROCKWELL: I think you got to paraphrase that stuff. I have a line in A View from the Bridge that says, “You mothers.” I guess they couldn’t say motherfuckers back then, so in my mind, I’m going to say motherfuckers, and hopefully we can put a car honking. I think you have to paraphrase stuff to get it in your body.
O’CONNOR: I’m finding that with Golden Boy .
ROCKWELL: You’re doing a New York accent?
O’CONNOR: Yeah. And it’s an Italian New York accent, so I’m trying not to do the stupid thing, but also it’s written in a very specific way.
ROCKWELL: How did you do it for Prince Charles? Because it seemed very real to me. It seemed like I was seeing Josh, but I was also see ing Prince Charles, which to me is very important. I don’t want to see just an imitation of Prince Charles.
O’CONNOR: I think I’m doing a ver sion of what you’re calling paraphrasing. That’s maybe an attempt at a blank canvas, and then you’re adding the color with the accent. Like when you did Vice as George Bush, it felt like such an embodi ment of the character. It didn’t feel like an impersonation.
O’CONNOR: I don’t want to watch a performance and go, “Oh my god, that’s so George Bush,” because if the audience is doing that, they’re not actually engaging in what’s being said, or what the story is, or where the emotion is in the scene.
ROCKWELL: You do see that with any great biopic, whether it’s Joaquin Phoenix in Walk the Line or Jamie Foxx in Ray . Coal Miner’s Daughter , to me, is the ultimate biopic, because it’s Sissy Spacek playing Loretta Lynn and Tommy Lee Jones playing her husband, but you don’t feel like you’re watching an imitation of someone. You feel like these are real people.
O’CONNOR: I often think of that Bob Dylan biopic Todd Haynes did, I’m Not There , which I loved because it wasn’t trying to mimic Bob Dylan. Cate Blanchett’s version of him seemed the most vivid, the thing I recognized most, but it was theat rical and surreal. Every actor was playing an aspect of Dylan, which was an acknowledgment that we don’t know who he is. None of us know who any of these people are. Just their essence.
ROCKWELL: I totally agree, and I think it goes for everything, whether it’s Clifford Odets or Arthur Miller. It’s important you come through, or I come through. When do you start rehearsal?
O’CONNOR: I’m off-book to the point you need to be for day one, but there’s only so much I can learn.
O’CONNOR: How about you? When do you start?
ROCKWELL: I start end-of-Octo ber rehearsal, November previews, December opening. So this is my time to get it in.
ROCKWELL: Well, I’ll come see you, then you come see me. Do you ever want to play Hamlet? Are there any roles you want to play?
O’CONNOR: Richard II for me is the one. Have you done Hamlet ?
ROCKWELL: No, no. I did a work shop on it. We did five or six scenes. I got kind of obsessed with it for a while.
ROCKWELL: I’m too old. I mean, I worked on Mercutio. I’m too old for that now. I got to play fucking Bottom or fucking—
O’CONNOR: Is there a Shakespeare role you always dreamt of doing?
ROCKWELL: I think Mercutio would probably actually be my top now. Maybe Petruchio would be fun.
O’CONNOR: Did you ever do Iago? That would be a great one.
ROCKWELL: Yeah. I saw Daniel [Craig] do that. He was great.
O’CONNOR: I saw that too. That was magic. I’d love to see you do some thing like that.
ROCKWELL: Maybe we could do a movie. A Shakespeare movie.
O’CONNOR: A Shakespeare movie. I remember thinking, me and Jessie, when we did Romeo and Juliet , because it was obviously supposed to be onstage, and then when we decided to make it a film, we said, “Nobody should be mak ing Shakespeare movies.” Here we are.
ROCKWELL: You’re probably right. We could do a play and then maybe make it a movie.
O’CONNOR: Let’s do the play first, then we’ll figure out the rest.
ROCKWELL: Well listen, man, I’d love to talk more with you—about the stuff we can’t talk about in Interview.
O’CONNOR: I’d love that. You’re going to love the movie. It’s so great. Cheers, Sam.
ROCKWELL: Cheers, man. Thanks a lot, dude.
Shirt and Pants Burberry. Tie Hermès. Watch Rolex.
Grooming: Rheanne White using Bumble and Bumble and Westman Atelier at Tracey Mattingly Agency.
Fashion Assistant: Erik Brambila Zavalza.
Production Management: Christine Carreira.
Source: Fashion
0 Comments