“I got that one totally wrong”: when Sam Rockwell flunked his audition for a Clint Eastwood classic
Sam Rockwell is one of those names you might not be instantly familiar with, but chances are you’ve seen a lot of his films. His catalogue is as varied as it is vast. He’s been a police officer in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (for which he won an Oscar), a lonely astronaut in Duncan Jones’ Moon, a sympathetic Nazi for Taika Waititi in Jojo Rabbit, and a villainous businessman in Marvel’s Iron Man 2.
Despite the myriad of amazing roles he’s played across his career, the accomplished actor has missed out on a number of massive projects. As a younger man, he went up for the part of John Carter on ER, the role that eventually went to Noah Wyle. He also failed to be chosen for Dead Poets Society despite his best efforts and, in perhaps his greatest missed opportunity, he once read for a part in Clint Eastwood’s classic Western, Unforgiven.
The part he went for was The Schofield Kid, the braggadocious young bounty hunter who confronts Eastwood’s Will Munny at the film’s start. Their interaction is what leads to Munny getting back in the game, kicking off the entire chain of events of the film. Rockwell would have been in his early 20s when auditioning for the character, which he feels worked against him. “I looked so young, but I wasn’t always good at playing young,” he confessed to The Guardian. “When I read for Unforgiven, I played the character as though he was James Dean. I got that one totally wrong.”
In the end, The Schofield Kid was played by Jaimz Wolvett, an actor who was just a year older than Rockwell. Despite Unforgiven’s runaway success – it won four Oscars, including Best Director for Eastwood and Best Picture – Wolvett’s career never really took off. He appeared in the movies Dead Presidents and Rosewood and has found work in various TV shows and the ‘Marvel vs. Capcom’ series of video games, but he’s never reached the heights of appearing in another Oscar-winning film.
If Rockwell had been able to get the audition right, he would have been perfect for the role. He specialised in playing excitable, irritating young men in his youth, a quality his interviewer likened to a “hyperactive puppy-dog.” If he’d have lent more into this obnoxious side, instead of trying to make the character genuinely cool, then maybe his name would have been there in the credits alongside Eastwood’s.
Ultimately, Rockwell doesn’t mind that he missed out on the part, and also didn’t seem to be that cut-up that his formerly youthful glow was beginning to fade. “I’m not just getting offered boy-men any more,” he told the newspaper in 2012, when he was 44 years old. “I’m happy that I’m finally getting some lines in my face. I always looked too young for the kind of roles I wanted. It was constraining. My face didn’t fit my innards until I reached 40.”
He might have missed out on one of the great Westerns of all time, but in the end, it all worked out pretty well for him. Rockwell continues to appear in major movies, such as the DreamWorks animation The Bad Guys, which is getting a sequel in 2025. He’s expanded successfully into TV and theatre, and although he’s not the cherub he once was, he doesn’t show any signs of slowing down.
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