“Hey, I’m gonna be a star.” That was nearly Sam Rockwell‘s line in “Lean on Me.” The 1989 movie which starred Morgan Freeman because the real-life educator Joe Louis Clark. Rockwell was forged within the movie, however — as he revealed throughout a current look on the podcast “Completely happy Unhappy Confused” — that one line ended up going to Michael Imperioli.
“They by no means acquired to my scene,” Rockwell defined to host Josh Horowitz (through Leisure Weekly). “So that they needed to let me go as a result of they didn’t wish to pay me for every week. So that they acquired to pay for a day participant or pay for every week. So that they… let me go. They fired me… And since they had been like, ‘Ah, we will’t pay them every week for one line.’ After which they employed Michael, and Michael [Imperioli] acquired it. Michael’s within the film, however I nonetheless acquired residuals… I nonetheless get residual checks for that, although I’m not in it.”
Mockingly, Imperioli had joined Rockwell and Kevin Corrigan on a drive to New Jersey, the place the trio auditioned for the movie. However Rockwell may need dodged a bullet. Imperioli advised The New Yorker in 2024 that director John G. Avildsen was “not very good.”
“However I’d by no means been in entrance of a digital camera,” Imperiolo stated. “This was the ’80s. There have been big Panavision cameras, and I didn’t know the place to look. I actually didn’t know what I used to be doing. I mumbled the road considering possibly they received’t discover me or one thing. After which [Avildsen] comes and begins giving path. He goes, ‘And also you with that “Gonna be a star,” you’d higher give me one thing otherwise you’re out of right here!’ I used to be horrified. I feel, I’m horrible, I suck.”
A number of years later, Rockwell discovered himself as soon as once more pitted in opposition to Imperioli — or not less than in comparison with him, this time within the 1998 Woody Allen flick “Superstar.”
“I used to be part of [Leonardo] DiCaprio’s entourage. And I had a couple of traces they usually stated, ‘Woody needs you to dye your hair bleach blonde,” he recalled. Rockwell countered that he wouldn’t dye his hair for 5 traces, however the workforce was insistent, “Woody needs you to do it.” Rockwell refused.
“They usually’re like, ‘Properly, Michael Imperioli was gonna do it.’ Trigger he had dropped out. And I used to be changing Michael — as a result of Michael was going to perform a little pilot referred to as ‘Sopranos,’ that I heard didn’t go wherever.” Rockwell stated. “And so I stated, “All proper, I’ll dye my hair.”
Rockwell is at the moment driving excessive on the most important crucial acclaim obtained by the third installment of “The White Lotus,” for which he’s a frontrunner within the Greatest Supporting Actor in a Drama Collection class on the Emmys.