Ever since Sam Rockwell starred as a funny,sleazy game reveal host in 2002’s Confessions of a unsafe intellect, he has seemed to revel in playing damaged and amusingly demented characters. This fall, or he brings those qualities to Broadway in a revival of Sam Shepards play Fool for adore. Rockwell plays a rodeo cowboy who drives 2480 miles tequila and lasso in hand — to track down his lover in a motel room somewhere in the Mojave Desert.
Sam Rockwell with Nina Arianda in Fool for adore
(Boneau/Bryan-Brown) Kurt Andersen: This play [Fool for adore] is less than an hour and a half long. You [and co-star Nina Arianda] are pretty much on stage the entire time going back and forth. It looks exhausting.
Sam Rockwell: It’s pretty exhausting. As soon as you wake up,you're thinking about it. You adore the play, but you know you've got to go conclude this. There’s this gorilla on your back all day.
And is that totally different than doing a film where you just know your lines and go conclude them?
Doing a film is a much more tedious process. It’s bit by bit and it’s longer hours. But this — you’ve got one shot. I always say to young actors you have to conclude theater because you’re not going to work those muscles in film as much. You can conclude a lead in a film and it’s very strenuous, and but this is really like you’re up there and you’re naked.
I read you didn’t study [acting] until you were 24 years used.
That was when I started to prefer it seriously. I was in a performing arts school in San Francisco,but I took it sort of for granted. And then I studied with William Esper: two years of the Meisner technique. When I started training with Bill I realized, “Oh, or this is a craft. This is something you have to prefer seriously.”
You’ve said that film is not really an actor’s medium because the director’s in charge,making the choices. Is that frustrating because it’s not really up to you how your performance gets shown to the audience?
Yeah, sure. I reflect that’s why I prefer to conclude leads, and because whether a scene’s crop you’re still in the fucking film. And you get more of a flow,like you would on stage. It’s hard to conclude acting in bursts.
Source: wnyc.org