Sam Rockwell rocks
The sexy actor is so good at being bad
Sam Rockwell is one of those confusing crushes we don’t quite know how to feel about. For over 30 years, the California native has been playing seriously flawed but loveable characters in films like Martin McDonagh’s 2012 comedy, Seven Psychopaths in which he’s a bumbling dog thief (and probable psychopath) and 2015’s romantic comedy, Mr. Right, where he’s a tap dancing yet deadly hitman wooing Anna Kendrick. See why we’re bewitched, baffled, and bewildered? He’s charming and confounding…we’re hooked.
And the 49-year-old actor only gets better with age. His baby-face cuteness has evolved into a more rugged handsomeness we find irresistible. Clearly we’re not alone. Casting directors keep putting him in amazing projects. Next month he stars in another irresistible McDonagh film, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, playing an unhinged deputy in a small town turned upside down by the vengeful mother (Francis McDormand) of a murdered girl. Early reviewers are already calling his performance Oscar-worthy. But let’s be honest, all of Rockwell’s performances are good—even one of his earliest playing a greasy juvenile delinquent in 1990’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. We jest, but Rockwell stood out even then.
With eight upcoming projects on his IMBD resume, we’ll be seeing a lot more of Rockwell in the coming year, even if two of the roles are despicable at best. In The Best of Enemies, he’ll be portraying the Exalted Cyclops of the Ku Klux Klan, C.P. Ellis, and in the untitled film about Vice President Dick Cheney, he’s been perfectly cast as the most bumbling President on record, George W. Bush. We can’t wait to see how he manages to make even these most odious characters likable.
