Robert Schwartzman doesn’t know where he is, artistically speaking that is. Geographically, he seems aware of where he is. He’s in L.A., having just arrived home from Qatar, where he was working on a film shoot. He’s about to leave for East Coast dates for his solo album, “Double Capricorn.” But, artistically speaking, the musician/actor and Rooney frontman is floating — just a bit.
“I’m figuring out what I want to do with all this stuff,” he says of acting, film scoring and the pop music he continues to record. “In a good way! It’s all over the place. I’m happy that it’s not defined. I can play around with different things.”
Schwartzman insists that his power pop project — the band known as Rooney — are not disbanded, just on hiatus.
“I think of it like marrying your high school sweetheart. We were high school friends who formed a band and toured and experienced all these things together. We all reached a point where we were like, ‘Let’s take a second.’ It seemed a healthy moment to collect ourselves.”
Why not just take a break from music altogether?
“I don’t know if I can; I can’t get too far away from it,” says Schwartzman. “Now I’ve had all this time to look at new opportunities — I’ve been pursuing that. I want to keep things fresh. I don’t want same old-same old.”
Family discipline
Robert Schwartzman had ac-ting roles in cousin Sofia Coppola’s “The Virgin Sui-cides” and “The Princess Diaries.” His uncle is Francis Ford Coppola, older bro Jason is Wes Anderson’s go-to guy, their mom is actress Talia Shire (“The Godfather” and “Rocky”) and his dad was a producer. Yeah, he grew up in a showbiz family.
“From a bird’s eye view it looks like that. … But I was all about music and movies. I love movies and acting, when the project is right. My mother would make us watch these great movies, force us to watch ‘Clockwork Orange’-style,” Schwartzman jokes. “I couldn’t close my eyes for three days.”
