Sam Rockwell might not look like the Justin Hammer you remember from old Iron Man comics, but when Iron Man 2 decided to include the character, he got the part. We caught up with Rockwell back at Comic Con for a preview of what’s in store for the movie version of Justin Hammer.

Crave Online:  What can you say about your character in Iron Man 2?

Sam Rockwell:  Well what you guys get from it is basically he's a rival to Tony Stark and he's an arms dealer and he's in cahoots with a couple of people.  He’s kind of a shyster.

Crave Online:  Was it fun for you doing such a big movie?

Sam Rockwell:  Yes, yes, it was fun. It was like the all-stars, which really, that was great.  You really get to work with really great talent, whether it’s Matty [Libatique], our cinematographer, or Jon [Favreau] or the actors Don Cheadle and Robert and everybody. It’s important to get challenged in that way otherwise you're sort of working in a vacuum. So I think it’s important to go and work with, Ron Howard and all these people. So it’s showing up to the big game. It’s fun.

Crave Online:  Are you going to turn out to be the bad guy like you often do in movies?

Sam Rockwell:   I think he’s actually, essentially he's a fan of Tony’s but he doesn’t get the attention he wants from Tony and so that's where I think it starts to go wrong for Justin a little bit.

Crave Online:  What was it like working with Mickey Rourke?

Sam Rockwell:  He was great. The first scene that we do in the film, Mickey suggested that we not meet until we shot that scene because our characters meet in the scene. Never spoken to him.  Jon Favreau relayed this to me and said, “Mickey doesn’t want to rehearse, he doesn’t want to meet before that first scene.”  And after that we did rehearse and work in a more conventional way but for that first scene where our characters meet, we didn’t meet until right before we started rolling camera.

Crave Online:  So you had no idea what way he’d perform the character?

Sam Rockwell:  Had no idea.  I worked out my props and stuff, we didn’t rehearse, I got there a little bit early and worked it out, because I had a lot of dialogue and I had a lot of stuff to deal with.  And the way the scene is, he enters and I'm already there.  So he came in, we shook hands and then they said “action” and we got into it.

Crave Online:  Was that a good way to work?

Sam Rockwell:  It was. It was really exciting, and I think it shows in the scene.  I think you'll see there's an electricity in the scene too, so it was really cool.

Crave Online:  What did you sink your teeth into as an actor?

Sam Rockwell:  Well, you know, I watched Amadeus. The  Salieri character is similar. It was being developed so I wasn't sure where the character was going, so I watched a lot of actors like Gene Hackman as Lex Luthor and George C. Scott in Hustler. I watched Bill Murray in Kingpin. I was trying to get a lot of different things to incorporate.  And I did some research on the guns and learned how to handle the guns and talk about the guns and stuff, and that was really all I had to work on.  I worked on it the way I worked on everything was with an acting coach named Terry Knickerbocker and we worked on it together.  I would get certain scenes and we’d work on it, do some homework and then those scenes would change.

Crave Online:  Would you say your character changed from the first time you saw the script?

Sam Rockwell:  Yes, yes, he did change, he did change.  He's an interesting character. I mean we’ll see how it evolves.

Crave Online:  What are the similarities between Justin Hammer and Tony Stark?

Sam Rockwell:  They're similar. I think that ultimately Justin is probably more insecure and so that might be his downfall. And his ambition may be stronger in a way.  So it’s a trap that Justin might fall into.

Crave Online:  What about Justin Theroux as a writer? Did you feel your Charlie’s Angels connection?

Sam Rockwell:  That's right, absolutely.  Justin’s amazing. He did a great job.  He was the sole writer on the piece and he’s great. He wrote a great character.  And the character that he played in The Baxter’s similar to Justin too, so it’s a little bit of that.  So, absolutely. I mean Justin and I are old friends. We met at a theatre festival in Williamstown, so he was able to help me a lot. 

Crave Online:  How did you find your groove with Robert Downey Jr?

Sam Rockwell:  We had a great time.  It was like we were gunslingers. The first day of shooting it was like we were trying to see who was faster. It was fun.