Sam Rockwell (born November 5, 1968) is an American actor.
Rockwell was born in Daly City, California, the son of actors who divorced when he was five years old. He was raised by his father, Pete Rockwell, in San Francisco while his mother, Penny Hess, stayed behind in New York (he spent his summer vacations with her). He had what The New York Times described in 1998 as a "footloose upbringing" and, at age 10, made his brief stage debut playing Humphrey Bogart in an East Village improv comedy sketch starring his mother.
He attended School of the Arts High School with Margaret Cho and dropped out before graduation. He later received his high school diploma after his parents enrolled him in an Outward Bound-style alternative high school called Urban Pioneers because, as Rockwell explained, "I just wanted to get stoned, flirt with girls, go to parties." The school, the actor said, "had a reputation as a place stoners went because it was easy to graduate", but the program ended up helping him regain an interest in performing. After appearing in an independent film during his senior year, he graduated and moved to New York to pursue an acting career.
After his first film role in the 1989 horror film Clownhouse which he filmed when based in San Francisco, he moved to New York and trained at the William Esper Studios. 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 1996 film Box of Moon Light. After appearances as a bumbling actor in 1999's sci-fi satire Galaxy Quest, in the 1999 Shakespeare adaptation A Midsummer Night's Dream as Flute, and as gregarious villain Eric Knox in Charlie's Angels, Rockwell won the biggest leading role of his career to date: The Gong Show host Chuck Barris in George Clooney's 2002 directorial debut, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. Rockwell's performance was well received, and the film received generally positive reviews. In addition to big-budget feature films, Rockwell also keeps his feet firmly planted in the indie film world with projects such as The F Word and he recently played a very randy, Halloween-costume-clad Batman in a short, Robin's Big Date, opposite Justin Long as Robin. He also starred in the 2008 film version of Snow Angels opposite Kate Beckinsale and directed by David Gordon Green.
Since 1992, Rockwell has been a member of the LAByrinth Theater Company, where Philip Seymour Hoffman and John Ortiz are Co-Artistic Directors. In 2005, Hoffman directed him in Stephen Adly Guirgis' hit play, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot. This past August, Rockwell work-shopped an upcoming LAByrinth production, North of Mason-Dixon, scheduled to debut in London in 2007 and then premiere in New York City later the same year. Other plays in which Rockwell performed are: Dumb Waiter (2001), Zoo Story (2001), Hot L Baltimore (2000), Goosepimples (1998), Love and Human Remains, Face Divided, Orphans, Dessert at Waffle House, and The Largest Elizabeth.
Rockwell has never been married, and stated in a 2007 interview, "I definitely don't want to become a parent. It's not my bag."