Why I like the odds on Sam’s latest oddball

SAM ROCKWELL glides across the floor of a Soho Hotel room, showing off a pair of red, white and blue Louboutin loafers.

‘They’re great dancing shoes,’ the actor declares, practising his moonwalk.

Rockwell is great company, on and off screen and the 49-year-old has been garnering a lot of attention lately for his role as Dixon, a dangerous goofball of a sheriff’s deputy, in Martin McDonagh’s brilliant movie Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, co-financed by Film4.

The picture is about Mildred ( Frances McDormand, giving the performance of her career), a woman furious at the local police for not adequately investigating the rape and murder of her daughter.

Mildred and Dixon clash continually, with her accusing him of being a ‘momma’s boy’. ‘ He’s an a*****e,’ Rockwell says of his character. ‘A racist. He has a bit of a Napoleon complex. He’s a hot mess on a hot summer’s day — until a change comes over him ...’ he stops himself before he can stray into spoileralert territory.

It is a beautifully layered performance and he and McDonagh clearly spent a lot of time creating Dixon’s persona.

Rockwell goes on: ‘We wanted him to have a comedic element but he also had to be formidable.’

It’s such a delicious film to watch, you need to see it twice (at least) to savour all the detail. Rockwell’s roles — mainly Southerners, cowboys and oddballs — hardly reflect his real background. He was raised in San Francisco, the son of a union organiser and an actress.

Next year he will play a Ku Klux Klan member in The Best Of Enemies (opposite Taraji P. Henson), and George W. Bush (alongside Christian Bale as Dick Cheney) in a political film called Backseat.

Right now, though, I see Rockwell dancing his way to an Oscar.