Michael Rooker is the rare character actor whose largest and most famous role happened early in his career rather than later. As the eponymous character in Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer, Rooker brought an intensity and casual menace to a role that’s as much about a serial murderer’s domestic dysfunction as it is about his terrible exploits. It took three years for Henry to find enough champions to get into theaters, but it made one heck of an audition tape for Rooker to submit for character roles of various stripes. For the past 25 years, Rooker has worked consistently in TV and film, with memorable turns as a Black Sox ballplayer in Eight Men Out, a Klansman in Mississippi Burning, and a foul husband turned mutated beast in James Gunn’s horror-comedy Slither. Rooker recently discussed these and other roles while doing publicity in Chicago for Gunn’s new superhero comedy, Super.
Super (2011)—“Abe”
The A.V. Club: You worked with writer-director James Gunn before on Slither, but this was a smaller production. What was the shoot like?
Michael Rooker: It was mayhem. No, not really. James tried to keep everything really organized. He had a good AD department. Everyone was professional, by which I mean all the actors of course had a lot of good experience, and the crew did as well. So even though the budget was small, everybody was dead-on and worked real hard. You have to when you do a little one like this, because you don’t have time to waste. And there is no time. There’s no money. In these kinds of productions, time is definitely money, so if you screw up a day or a shot, you may not get a chance to go back and get that shot and redo that day.
Read the full article by Scott Tobias over at avclub.com
