This is definitely a motley crew.Sam Rockwell is an actor who has made a name as an apparent eccentric who always seems to play the tormentor instead of the tormented soul (on screen at least).
Seated next to him is Tony Goldwyn, the clean-cut Actor-Director, better known for his turn as the smooth villain in the popular 1990 movie Ghost, and to my right is a charming and unassuming woman, Betty Ann White, who is the main reason why we are all here.
White made headlines in the Spring 2001, when her 18-year old labor of love paid off and she and her legal team were able to finally free her unfairly imprisoned brother Kenny, who was serving a life sentence for a crime he did not commit.
The Whites’ ordeal and Betty Ann’s self-made incredibly triumphant journey from a Massachusetts high school drop-put, single mother of two to a practicing attorney licensed in two States seemed tailor-made for Hollywood.
And so it was a matter of time before their story turned into a movie, Conviction, starring Hilary Swank in the role of Betty Ann and Rockwell in the role of Kenny.
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According to Goldwyn, he needed an actor like Sam Rockwell – which given the trouble-maker whom Kenny seemed to have been before he was imprisoned, would not seem like a compliment.
Indeed, Goldwyn thought of the real-life Kenny as a huge, out of control spirit who had a bi-polar personality and a really manic side to him. ‘I needed an actor who had that capability…and Sam had that ability.
I knew he could be both puckish but also volatile and really dangerous and frankly make me believe that he might kill someone…’ Betty Ann, with a puckish smile herself, admits that she could believe this about Sam from ‘a green mile’.
After this ringing round of endorsements, Rockwell, who is either extremely graceful or does not seem to take himself too seriously, reassures me that he is definitely NOT manic depressive but that he has dated people who are bi-polar…and ‘they are all actresses, but not my current one!’
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A life’s dedication to one’s brother clearly must carry a heavy toll, but White cannot even imagine not having done it or what her life would have been otherwise.
Although she endured a divorce during the 18 years it took to liberate Kenny, ‘I have no idea where my life would have been because it has been my life for so long that I don’t know how different it could have been…and now this is my life’, she confesses with a beatific smile.
White comes across as a reluctant lawyer who speaks proudly of her work with Barry Scheck and the Innocence Project, which is dedicated to getting state laws passed on the preservation of evidence and DNA. A cause close to her heart is the fight in Massachusetts, where ‘there is no DNA statute that gives access to DNA testing even though it could prove people’s innocence…nor does it have one that preserves evidence.’
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White comes across as a reluctant lawyer who speaks proudly of her work with Barry Scheck and the Innocence Project, which is dedicated to getting state laws passed on the preservation of evidence and DNA.
A cause close to her heart is the fight in Massachusetts, where ‘there is no DNA statute that gives access to DNA testing even though it could prove pe
