Chris Cooper chats about 'August: Osage County'

Chris Cooper is the calm at the center of the storm that is "August: Osage County," the film adaptation of Tracy Letts' Pulitzer Prize-winning play.

His kindhearted Charlie Aiken serves as the sole counterpunch to the blinding rage that fills the other characters and permeates this story of the tremendously dysfunctional Weston family, occupying a single house in Oklahoma after patriarch Beverly (Sam Shepard) kills himself.

amNewYork spoke with the Oscar winner about the movie, which stars Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts, among other notables, and opens Dec. 27.