“Hi, I will be a star.” It was almost Sam RockwellS line in ”Lean on me. “1989 film Who played Morgan Freeman as the real trainer Joe Louis Clark. Rockwell was thrown into the movie, but – as he revealed during a recent look on the podcast “Happy sadly confused” – the one line stopped going to Michael Imperioli.
“They never came to my scene,” Rockwell explained to host Josh Horowitz (Via Entertainment Weekly). “So they had to let go of me because they didn’t want to pay me for a week. So they had to pay for a day player or pay for a week. So they … let me go. They shot me … and because they were like,” ah, we can’t pay them for a week for a line. “And then they hired Michael, and Michael (Imperioli) got it.
Ironically, Imperioli had joined Rockwell and Kevin Corrigan on a car trip to New Jersey, where the trio auditioned for the film. But Rockwell may have avoided a bullet. Imperioli told New Yorker In 2024, director John G. Avildsen was “Not very pleasant.”
“But I had never been in front of a camera,” Said Imperiolo. “This was the 80s. There were gigantic pan -bait cameras, and I didn’t know where to look. I really didn’t know what I was doing. I mumbled the line and thought they won’t notice me or anything. And then (Avildsen) will and start to give direction. He goes,” and you with it “will be a star,” you would not give me anything or you are out here! “I was frightened.
Several years later, Rockwell was once again pussy against imperioli – or at least compared to him, this time in the Woody Allen girl in 1998.
“I was a part of (Leonardo) DiCaprio’s entourage. And I had a few lines and they said:” Woody wants you to dye your hair Blek blonde, “he recalled. Rockwell counteracted that he would not dye his hair in five lines, but the team was insistent,” Woody wants you to do it. “Rockwell refused.” Rockwell refused.
“And they are like,” yes, Michael Imperioli would do it. ‘Because he had lost. And I replaced Michael – for Michael would make a little pilot called ‘Sopranos’, which I heard did not go anywhere. “Rockwell said.
Rockwell is currently riding high on the great critical praise obtained by The third part of “The White Lotus,” for which He is a front trunner In the best actor in a category for drama series at Emmys.
