Fans of Sam Rockwell have often had to resort to limited glimpses of him in supporting, character-actor roles. In his new film, Moon, that's far from a concern.

Rockwell is almost the only actor in Moon, which opens in South Florida in July. And there's more than one of him. He plays astronaut Sam Bell, who's living alone on the far side of the moon, finishing his three-year contract harvesting lunar rock for energy on Earth. When Bell's health begins deteriorating, he starts seeing a younger version of himself around the base.

That the movie is a showcase for the 40-year-old is somewhat intentional: For his first film, Duncan Jones wrote the part specifically for the actor, designing an ''acting challenge'' meant to be too intriguing for Rockwell to turn down.

''I just thought it was sacrilegious that there weren't more roles where he was the leading man,'' says Jones, the son of David Bowie.

Rockwell has shown a talent for portraying characters on the margins. His outsiders sometimes reside happily on the fringe -- as in his early breakthrough performance as an ''off-the-grid'' loner in Tom DiCillo's Box of Moonlight (1996) -- or desperately want back in, as in his talk-show host-hitman in George Clooney's Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002).

Rockwell says his impulse for such roles comes from the '70s cinema of alienation -- movies like Taxi Driver and Midnight Cowboy.

''Those films are just constantly coming back to me,'' Rockwell says.

After Box of Moonlight, he had memorable roles in The Green Mile, Galaxy Quest, Charlie's Angels and Matchstick Men, opposite Nicolas Cage.

Film critic Roger Ebert has calls him ''your go-to guy for weirdness,'' comparing him to Christopher Walken. Rockwell, whose recent notable credits include Frost/Nixon and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, was always interested in darker material, but began to notice he was mostly offered comedies that sought to mine his oddball tendencies a bit too obviously.

The little-seen and underrated Snow Angels of 2007 was a line in the sand for Rockwell -- ''not that anyone else noticed,'' he notes -- playing an estranged (and deranged) husband bent on winning back his wife.

''I was getting some comedies and stuff -- and I love comedy -- but I just wanted to kind of make a statement, sort of an artistic statement,'' Rockwell says. ``You really kind of have to stick to your guns because people want you to do certain things.''

His love of movies is easily evident. As touchstones for the characters, he delved into David Cronenberg's Dead Ringers. He expressed admiration for Michael Keaton in Multiplicity. And he said he ''literally stole'' from Dustin Hoffman's Ratso Rizzo in Midnight Cowboy.

Rockwell considers Moon one of a handful of films -- along with Box of Moonlight, Confessions and Snow Angels -- where he made ``a growth spurt creatively.''

He's also about to make a growth spurt commercially, co-starring in the Iron Man sequel, in which he plays Justin Hammer, the industrialist rival of Tony Stark. Rockwell received the script only a week before shooting, so he ``kind of took it on faith.''

''It's not dissimilar to other studio movies, but the thing that's different about it is (director Jon Favreau) really likes to improvise,'' Rockwell says. ``So we get to play more on this movie than you would on a lot of studio movies.''

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