I find that there’s a fascinating relationship, even if it’s one of mere physical resemblance, between a good actor or actress and the string of historically based individuals he or she inevitably portrays. While a role says little about a performer’s true personality, it speaks volumes to his or her screen presence and cultural persona.

Culturally speaking, who is Michael Rooker? It’s a question that even robots that haven’t been built yet will eventually take days to answer. If the rumors are true, and Michael Rooker is the ghost of a Tyrannosaurus Rex trapped in the reanimated corpse of an alien cyborg pulled out of the Rosewell crash, then… I dunno. Case closed, I guess. But if he’s actually as enigmatic, fascinating and cannibalistic as he looks, the case may remain perpetually ajar. Let’s poke around five of his fact-based character roles and see if we can’t reveal some extraterrestrial circuitry or a tiny, ethereal dinosaur arm. So to speak.

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986)

Rooker played: Henry

Who was inspired by: Henry Lee Lucas

Henry Lee Lucas was a bad mutha. And not in the Shaft way (unless you’re talking about late-period Shaft, when he was a homicidal drifter with a glass eye). John McNaughton’s darkly realistic film is partially based on Lucas’ eventual criminal confession, in which he attested to killing more than 600 people during the brief period between 1975 and 1983. Lucas’ admission, which included claims that he was a Satanist who practiced bestiality and cannibalism, was later recanted when authorities called shenanigans on his wild, unlikely tale. A Texas-based Lucas task force later stated that only 350 of the originally confessed murders could be even tangentially connected to Lucas’ supposed whereabouts and activities. Ultimately, Lucas was only conclusively linked to, and convicted for, 11 murders.

It’s interesting to watch McNaughton’s film (and Rooker’s performance) with this factual ambiguity in mind. Henry does commit horrible, brutal homicides, but look at the film’s opening – it features a number of disparate still shots of brutally murdered women, but never conclusively links Rooker’s character to the crimes. In scenes between the gory tableaus, Henry is seen performing banal, everyday activities. It’s as if, even at Henry’s most innocent, a world of horrors is playing out in his imagination – an imagination that begins to closely resemble his grotesque, tail-spinning reality. Even in these opening moments, the film provides a strong visual representation of the confounding uncertainties that remain part of Lucas’ repugnant legacy.

Mississippi Burning (1988)

Rooker played: Frank Bailey

Who was inspired by: Alton Wayne Roberts

On June 21, 1964, in the small town of Meridian, Mississippi, Alton Wayne Roberts, an ex-marine and gun-toting member of the Ku Klux Klan, executed two civil rights workers and helped to kill a third. Roberts went on to serve just ten years in Federal prison before returning to Meridian and opening a dance club. Sure, Rooker has a toned physique and imposing presence that make a buzz cut and starched uniform look right at home. He has a gruff bark and a bite that can be delivered either mouth-wise or with a big, chompy jump kick. But it must have taken every last one of his acting chops to play the kind of bigoted a-hole who would put on a white hood and open a dance club. Hi-yo! Seriously, though, if Ed Norton’s character from “American History X” and Michael Rooker’s character from “Mississippi Burning” had some kind of curb vs. bullets racist off… I’m gonna stop right there. If you’re already feeling uncomfortable, just picture Norton and Rooker in a soapbox derby. Look at Rooker’s big body in that tiny little car!

Days of Thunder (1990)

Rooker played: “Rowdy” Burns

Who was inspired by: Dale Earnhardt

While the film’s producers still deny that Rooker’s aptly named character is meant to represent the famously ‘tude-imbued stock car driver, many critics and fans cite Rowdy’s brash demeanor and trademark black car as tell-tale Earnhardt evocations. Earnhardt, whose reputation as an uncompromisingly aggressive driver earned him nicknames like “Ironhead” and “The Intimidator,” was a successful competitor in the NASCAR circuit, winning 76 races before dying in a crash during the final laps of 1991’s Daytona 500. Rooker’s portrayal, which begins with a series of car-bumping pissing contests between Rowdy and racing neophyte Cole Tickler (Tom Cruise), ends extremely sympathetically, as Rowdy confronts career-ending medical problems and the two head-butting drivers eventually bond and learn how to piss together. Watch Rooker transform Rowdy from a showboating dick-swinger into a loveable grouse and then tell me you don’t want to cover his big, craggy face with butterfly kisses.

JFK (1991)

Rooker played: Bill Broussard

Who was inspired by: William Wood (AKA Bill Boxley)

To accurately attempt to summarize both Boxley’s actual role in the aftermath of JFK’s assassination and Stone’s scapegoat-desperate repositioning of Boxley’s corresponding filmic character would be impossible for two reasons: first, because I don’t f***ing understand any of it; second, because I don’t really care. Jesus, I’m still trying to sort out that thing where you can see a ghost in “3 Men and a Baby.” Basically, Boxley was a disgraced, alcoholic ex-CIA agent hired by New Orleans DA Jim Garrison to investigate a possible government conspiracy surrounding the president’s assassination. Specifically, Boxley (an alias provided by Garrison to discourage any unwanted Federal scrutiny) was hired to draw specific links between traditional CIA operating procedures and the details of Kennedy’s death in order to prove that a CIA agent served as the triggerman. While in real-life, Boxley and Garrison were supposedly good friends and an efficient, if misguided, investigatory team, Stone has Rooker play Boxley as a consummate negative Nellie, doubting Garrison (Stone’s hero) every step of the way and ultimately causing the complete disruption of a conspiracy revelation via determined hard-headedness and general nay-saying. Basically, Rooker plays a meanie. Moving on…

Tombstone (1993)

Rooker played: Sherman McMasters

Who was based on: Sherman McMasters

In 1780, only two years after joining the Texas Rangers, Sherman McMasters was already under suspicion of stealing government mules and robbing a stagecoach. In the ensuing years, however, he drifted back towards the side of the law and joined up with Wyatt Earp, who he assisted in the famous Vendetta Ride, in which Earp and his posse of federal agents (illegally) hunted down outlaws and exacted bloody revenge for the death of Earp’s brother, Morgan. Some people claim that McMasters was an undercover agent working for Wells Fargo, and had only committed his early crimes as a means by which to infiltrate and disrupt a band of cattle rustlers, but experts remain uncertain. In the film, McMasters is portrayed as a badass who doesn’t live long enough to receive much of a back story beyond the outlaw-turned-renegade-lawman stuff. In this vision of McMasters, then, Rooker fills the shoes of a retired outlaw exhausted by the corruptive freedom of the American West and drawn to fight restlessly against the ignoble vestiges of his former self. In other words, “yee-haw!”

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