Clooney’s Directorial Debut Gave Sam Rockwell a Breakout Lead Role

George Clooney's 2002 directorial debut, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, adapts the memoir of Chuck Barris, a television host who claims he worked for the CIA as an assassin in the 1960s and 70s. The film cast Sam Rockwell as Barris, with Clooney as a CIA fixer, Drew Barrymore as Barris's girlfriend and Julia Roberts as one of his espionage contacts.

Clooney's film deliberately blurs fantasy and reality, never fully accepting its subject and letting Barris’s story sit between an extraordinary double life and the fantasies of a man feeling unfulfilled. Rockwell's Barris opens the film with: "When you are young, your potential is infinite," then adds, "Then you get to an age where what you might be gives way to what you have been." The movie suggests what follows may be the wishes of a man in crisis.

At the time Rockwell was less known than his co-stars, but placing him at the center proved effective.

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