An issue with racial prejudice is that one can’t differentiate between those who hold those backward ideologies, and those who do not, simply by the way they look, unless of course, they’re donning a pointy-white hood, matching robe, and enjoy burning effigies of the cross; then it’s certainly safe to assume. Until 2019, Hollywood’s answer to casting the Ku Klux Klan was to just call Sam Rockwell. The brilliant Academy Award-winning actor seems to have played every type of racist under the sun; a few adjustments always need to be made depending on the time period of the movie, and whether he should dial up the overt racism, and throw homophobia, antisemitism, and misogyny into the mix, or tune it down somewhat and be the quietly disgruntled, neighborhood racist who’ll cross the street if he were to encounter a Black person.
This kind of typecasting is woefully unfortunate, as Rockwell has shown time and time again that he’s an incredible actor with great range (perhaps most so in the Chuck Palahniuk adaptation of Choke, where he was absolutely perfect in a weak movie unworthy of his performance). It got to the point where, having played a leader of the KKK in Robin Bissell’s The Best of Enemies, Rockwell publicly announced that he wanted to take a long break from playing racists. Undoubtedly, having to assume the character of a racist and the subconscious associations that comes with must get pretty tiresome even if it is just acting. In the few brief years since then, he’s only continued to prove why he’s so much more valuable.
Sam Rockwell has been one of the standout Hollywood performers of the last two decades, earning himself critical acclaim in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri, picking up the Best Actor in a Supporting Role Oscar, as well as scooping the same prize at the BAFTAs. Having recently starred as the disinterested Inspector Stoppard in See How They Run, the Matchstick Men and Snow Angels actor has developed quite the filmography, and here are some of his best movies…
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6 Seven Psychopaths
Momentum PicturesCBS Films
Marty (Colin Farrell) is an Irish screenwriter, struggling to complete his new screenplay, Seven Psychopaths. Marty unintentionally becomes immersed in a dangerous sh*tstorm, as his idiotic friends and part-time dog-nappers, Hans and Billy (a great Christopher Walken and Sam Rockwell) steal from a local gangster (Woody Harrelson). While not the most brilliant Martin McDonagh film, Seven Psychopaths is still great, wicked fun.
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5 Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
Section Eight
George Clooney’s directorial debut, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind based on the true story of Chuck Barris, the 60s and 70s television host, who claimed he was an undercover operative and hitman for the CIA. Sam Rockwell’s portrayal of Barris brings real depth to a character that was haunted by what he saw as his life’s failings and the burden of talent.
4 The Green Mile
Warner Bros.
The Shawshank Redemption director, Frank Darabont, returned after a five-year hiatus with another Academy Award-nominated production of a Stephen King novel with 1999’s The Green Mile. Concerning a man falsely convicted of the double rape and murder of two young white girls, the physically imposing John Coffey earns the respect and admiration of his prison guards with his spectacular supernatural powers. Coffey is tormented by his repugnant, racist cell neighbor, William “Wild Bill” Wharton (Sam Rockwell) who berates John and the Green Mile’s prison guards.
3 Jojo Rabbit
Fox Searchlight Pictures
Taika Waititi’s satirical dark comedy Jojo Rabbit is a combination of downright hysterical silliness, and a touching coming-of-age story about Jojo Betzler, a German boy caught up in the midst of WWII. As a budding member of the Hitler Youth movement, Betzler has been firmly indoctrinated by the Nazi war machine, and the process of mass brainwashing that occurred under Hitler’s dictatorship, having befriended an imaginary Hitler (played by the brilliant director himself).
His discovery of a young Jewish girl hidden in his house throws Jojo’s ideals and loyalties into disarray, with his own mother (an incredible Scarlett Johansson) complicit in helping hide the girl, and Jojo is left to make an ever-looming decision. Sam Rockwell’s stars as the ironically gay Nazi officer Captain Klenzendorf, an alcoholic unfit for duty after losing an eye and is resigned to running a glorified kids camp for the Hitler youth. Rockwell absolutely nails it here as, oddly enough, a compassionate Nazi.
2 Three Billboard Outside Ebbing Missouri
Martin McDonagh’s Academy Award and BAFTA-winning Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri is an exhilarating, deeply-stirring account of a mother’s quest to obtain justice for the rape and murder of her daughter. Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand) is a ferocious, sharp-witted, and highly-astute woman, bereaved by the premature loss of her daughter she hires three billboards just out of town with the sentences “Raped while dying and still no arrests. How come, Chief Willoughby?”
Steadfast in the hope that justice will prevail seven months after her child’s death, Mildred resorts to extreme methods to grab the attention of the local police, and spur them into action. Sam Rockwell plays a police officer plagued by this discriminatory disposition, a nasty man that plays into the racist police stereotype. As with most of McDonagh’s movies, the film’s script is interlaced with the subtle quirks, and wisecracking banter that makes his screenplays so distinctive both aesthetically and emotionally. Subsequently, Rockwell went on to win the Academy Award for Best Supporting Role, something he completely deserved after fully inhabiting this character’s strange, dark arc.
1 Moon
Sony Pictures Classics
Rockwell starred as essentially the only main character in the 2009 sci-fi drama Moon, Astronaut Sam Bell. Sent on a solo mission to the moon, Sam gets to work at his space station alongside his slightly creepy computer sidekick, GERTY (the even creepier Kevin Spacey). Having been alone for three years, and tasked with harvesting an element called helium-3 to send back to Earth, Sam begins to doubt his own sanity and his entire existence following a head injury. In Moon, he produces, plausibly, his career-defining performance, a lonely man driven to the brink by circumstance.
