Rockwell is no angel in 'Snow'

Boy, is Sam Rockwell tired of playing the kid.At 39, he knows he has come a long way from his first big-screen part in the teen horror film "Clownhouse" to his Hollywood movies such as "The Green Mile" with co-star Tom Hanks and "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind" with director George Clooney.But it hasn't been until recently that Rockwell has felt that he has finally outgrown his trademark boy-man parts, such as the one he played in Tom DiCillo's "Box of Moon Light" (1997). He has never felt comfortable with those roles."My face is just starting to mature to where I can actually play men," Rockwell says. "It's nice. Because even when I looked young, I never felt young. I've felt like I was a man since I was 10 years old."Maybe it's the beard he wears in "Snow Angels," but Rockwell may have made his manliest move yet. Based on the novel of the same name by Stewart O'Nan, "Snow Angels" stars Rockwell as Glenn, who is sometimes violent, often drunk, jumps from job to job and is a part-time Christian trying to win back his estranged wife and daughter."I was drawn to the character of Glenn in the same ways that I was drawn to all the anti-hero film characters of the 1970s," Rockwell says, citing "The Deer Hunter," "Five Easy Pieces," "Taxi Driver" and "The Onion Field" as examples. "The character is not easy to like. You can easily find reasons to hate him. But my job is to get you to relate to or at least understand him."Directed by David Gordon Green, "Snow Angels" is set in a wintry suburban Pennsylvania town where every character's mood seems to be affected by the harsh, cold, dark and gloomy environment.Glenn's wife, Annie, played by Kate Beckinsale, spends half her time leading her husband to believe that they might work things out and the other half pushing him out of the way so she can continue an affair with another man. Meanwhile, Arthur (Michael Angarano), a neighboring high school student with an innocent crush on Annie, watches his parents' marriage fall apart as he tries to mind his own business and win the heart of a nerdy but cute girl at school (Leah Ostry).Rockwell's performance as Glenn leads the rest of the cast toward doom and gloom, all the while with an undertone of optimism that everything will be all right forever."In the South, where I'm from, it's hot, and people hang out on the porch," Green says. "That brings a sense of community awareness, where you to say hi to people coming home from work. The snow and cold keep you inside and leave a sense of mystery of what goes on behind closed doors."Rockwell says he felt especially ready for the role because he had recently finished playing the part of Judas in the Philip Seymour Hoffman-directed stage production of "The Last Days of Judas Iscariot." "Playing Judas really prepared me for Glenn," Rockwell says. "Both characters are hard to root for. Both had a lot of depth and feelings of conflict. Both had beards. And both have scenes where they have to get drunk."Call it a perk. In recalling his fondest memories about working on "Snow Angels," Rockwell puts drinking lots of beer at the top of his list, along with working with Beckinsale, not having to worry about appearing fit and having days off to hang around sleepy bars in Halifax, the town in Nova Scotia where the movie was filmed."I've always been fascinated by drunk scenes," says Rockwell, whose alcohol-fueled tirades in "Snow Angels" give the film some extra-spiked punch. "I'm sure some people just get drunk in front of the camera, but I don't prescribe to that. I think you can do that for a day, maybe. But not for a whole movie."For Rockwell's climactic drunk scene, in which he confronts his wife and her lover, the actor gargled with Jack Daniel's whiskey and spit it out just before shooting."I think the crew thought I really was drunk, which I didn't mind," Rockwell says. "I wanted that sense of unpredictability on the set because that's good for the scene. It helps to have everyone involved have that feeling of, 'Whoa, wait a minute. What's this going to do?' ""I thought he was drunk," Green says. "I still think he was. He tells me he wasn't, so I guess his acting was that good."(E-mail Delfmn Vigil at dvigil(at)sfchronicle.com)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)