This Day in Horror History: Happy Birthday Michael Rooker

Josh Millican |

Apr 6, 2020

Perhaps a victim of typecasting, Michael Rooker has played a cornucopia of villains, thugs, bad guys, and brutes. Few genre actors have made as many iconic turns on horror. Rooker’s very first feature film made him an instant heavyweight; he played the titular psychopath in 1986’s Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. From there, he went on to appear in films including The Dark Half, The Bone Collector, Slither, The Belko Experiment, Brightburn, and Fantasy Island. He also played Daryl’s brother Merle Dixon on The Walking Dead TV series.

Trivia:
The Walking Dead (2010) is not the first series on which he played a character with a prosthetic arm. He played a one-armed, drug smuggling, boat captain with a hook for a hand in the CSI: Miami (2002) episode “Dead Zone”. (Source)

Personal Quote:
On landing Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986): I was doing a play called Sea Marks, an Irish play, a two-person play. The director was doing the prosthetic work for Henry, and he turned me on to what was going on. “They’re casting this guy. You should go and audition”. I did, and I ended up getting the job. That’s how it came about. That was my first real film role that had any sort of beginning, middle, and end. I was there throughout the whole piece. I started reading some books and material. Nothing really helped. I saw a couple of interviews with [Henry Lee Lucas] with a state trooper or something like that. So I got a little handle on it from that. He’s very soft-spoken, and very shy and introverted. So I hooked into that, and that was my handle for the role. Everything else was just our imaginations, and my imagination. That was a really kind of crazy piece for me, because I was scared shitless. It was my first real role in film. I had done plays, but I wasn’t sure if I was going to be good at this film stuff, so I really worked hard to make sure that I was there, I was bringing it that day and that minute. I stayed in character all day. Once I went in to work, I stayed in character all day long. So after the cut, I would leave the set and go to my room, close the door, and not talk to anybody. I wouldn’t talk to anyone all day long during the filming of it. I would just do my work and go away. Come in, action, do my job, do what I needed to do, and then go away. And that’s what helped me through the entire piece. It was way too difficult to go in and out of character, especially then, because I was young as an actor. I didn’t know how this film stuff worked. In a play, you stay in character pretty much almost all the way through until the evening’s over. So that’s what I did here. I used that technique. I stayed in character as much as I possibly could all day long, or all night long, whatever the times were on the day we worked. People thought that was a little weird, that I’d just go away, that I wouldn’t talk to them and stuff. Then they saw my room, and I had all my mirrors covered up, taped up. I didn’t want to see images of myself, and I kept the room dark or black. And I just stayed in the room and just prepared for the next scene. So yeah, it was kind of weird and crazy, but that was a technique that seemed like it worked. (Source)

Check out the trailer and synopsis for Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer below.

Synopsis:
Henry (Michael Rooker) is released from prison following his mother’s murder. He supplements his job as an exterminator with a series of indiscriminate and violent murders. Fellow jailbird and drug dealer Otis (Tom Towles) becomes a willing accomplice in Henry’s bloody killings. But as the depravity escalates and Henry forms a bond with Otis’ sister, Becky (Tracy Arnold), things start to get out of hand. The film is based on the true-life story of serial killer Henry Lee Lucas.