“Robert worked on an oil rig for a number of years in Kuwait during the 1970s. He brought a ton of passion and a sort of ‘workman’ credibility to the role, besides being a great actor,” says “Swimmers” writer-director Doug Sadler of Robert Knott’s powerful performance as a Chesapeake Bay waterman. “You have this overwhelming sense of the appreciation Robert has for these people.”

Sadler discovered Knott through actor Ed Harris, who had served as one of Sadler’s advisors at the Sundance Institute Directing Workshop and had previously cast Knott as his brother in his critically-acclaimed film, “Pollack.”

Harris was so impressed with the “Swimmers” script that he had shown it to Knott before there was any discussion about who would play Will Tyler in the film.

“It was like nothing I’ve ever read,” Knott says. “It was really soulful and very special, yet it wasn’t sentimental. There’s no good guys, there’s no bad guys. I think that’s what is so great about this: it feels more like real life than anything I’ve ever been a part of.

“I’ve been to a number of festivals with this film, and I’m so pleased with the response that we’ve had. It resonates with people in a way that few films do today. There’s something about this movie that works the second and a third time you see it, because there’s a poetry to it.”

The third generation of a show business family, Knott grew up in the rarest of circumstances. His father was a professional jazz trumpet player. His mother was an actress who performed mostly in musicals, and a highly-respected regional stage director.

For over three decades, beginning in the 1930s, Knott’s maternal grandparents had their own well-known vaudeville troupe, called “The Standley Players Tent Show.” Comprised of actors, storytellers, musicians, dancers, singers and comedians, the group toured the Midwest, going from town to town entertaining migrant workers during the harvest season.

“My grandfather fell in love with the tent show business. They’d do three-act melodramas. They were the most talented, crazy people that you could possibly imagine,” says Knott with obvious admiration. Knott’s mother, aunt, and uncle Johnny Standley, were born on the circuit and grew up performing in the family act. Johnny would go on to become one of the first stand-up comedians in the country and toured with the likes of Red Skelton, Andy Griffith and Art Carney during the 1940s. He also became a popular radio personality and invented the famous diddy, “The knee bone’s connected to thigh bone. The thigh bone is connected to the hip bone…”

At the same time, Knott’s fraternal grandfather had a cowboy marching band, which dazzled audiences by twirling ropes and playing trombones while on horseback.

Knott’s parents met when his father joined “The Standley Players.” They later married under the big tent, and following the road show’s last curtain call, they settled down in Oklahoma City to raise their family. Not surprisingly, Knott’s older sister became a stage actress. His other sister became first?runner?up in the Miss Oklahoma pageant, then found work in New York as a hoofer before touring as a dancer for Johnny Mathis. And his brother became a theater director.

“But I didn’t want any part of it!” Knott laughs of his decision to steer clear of anything to do with show business. Instead, he attended the University of Oklahoma for a couple of years, majoring in art, then traveled the world as an oil field rigger for the next 13 years.

“I just fell in love with the drilling business. When I was 23 years old, I built the first drilling rig in Kuwait. By the time I was 25, I had 35 guys working for me.”

As if looking destiny in the eye, Knott still recalls the time one of his crew said to him: “’What are you doing this for? You should be in the arts like your parents.’ I remember saying at the time – and I still feel that way – ‘Look, art is wherever you are, no matter what you’re doing.’ There’s something about really knowing how to get up and work hard. I mean, really bust your ass.”

When the oil business went belly-up in 1982, Knott returned home and began building houses – but he was soon bored. “So I said to my mother my one day, “You know, there’s this play they’re doing downtown. I was thinking why not go down and audition for it?’ She dropped her jaw and said, ‘What!’ My dad came in and he said, ‘Oh no, you’re not.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I’m thinking about doing it.’”

All those years of helping different family members rehearse their lines paid off. Knott arrived at the theater not knowing anyone, got the script, gave a cold reading and won the part.

He continued to score local roles, then headed to Dallas, which had become a booming production center due to the success of the hit television show, “Dallas.” Knott got an agent and immediately landed his first role – as an oil field worker in the film, “It Takes Two.” Soon after, he was cast as Jesse James in the television mini-series, “Oklahoma Passage,” then appeared in several other TV and film parts before heading to Los Angeles in 1990.

Ironically, the very first Hollywood role Knott scored was for a film called “My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys,” starring Scott Glenn, Kate Capshaw and Tess Harper – which was scheduled to shoot in Oklahoma City.

During the next decade, Knott appeared in such films as “Scanner Cop II, Walter Hill’s “Wild Bill,” Stephen Frears’ “The Hi-Lo Country,” Robert M. Young’s “Human Error,” “Buffalo Soldiers,” “Storm” with Martin Sheen, Robert M. Young’s “The Human Error” and “The Joyriders” with “Swimmers” co-star Shawn Hatosy – as well as episodes of “JAG,” “3rd Rock from the Sun,” and “ER.”

In 2000, Knott co-starred as the brother of tragic abstract expressionist Jackson Pollack in Ed Harris’ critically-acclaimed film, “Pollack” – which yielded an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for Marcia Gay Harden and a Best Actor nomination for Harris.

Most recently, he co-starred in the independent film, “Garage,” an official selection at numerous film festivals in early 2006.