“We all have addictions. … Some people love ice cream, some people love chocolate, some people love gambling, some people love heroin, some people love shopping. But, to some degree, we are all doing what we need to do to fill a void or to validate ourselves or live on the edge.”

These are the words of actor Romany Malco, whose role in first-time writer/director Hue Rhodes’ “Saint John of Las Vegas” marks a departure from the comedic roles on which he has achieved a considerable measure of Hollywood success.

In the moody film, Rhodes explores how one’s addictions can undermine success, yet at the same time provide deliverance. After a stroke of bad luck, John (Steve Buscemi), a compulsive gambler, leaves Las Vegas in search of a normal life. Taking a 9-to-5 job at an Albuquerque insurance company, the cubicle dweller tries hard to stay on the straight and narrow, despite his continued fondness of scratch-off lotto tickets. When his boss (Peter Dinklage) asks him to escort his top fraud debunker, Virgil (Romany Malco), on an investigation of a car accident near Vegas, John jumps at the opportunity for a promotion. However, going to this city means he will again have to face his addiction.

Along the way, they meet a series of quirky characters, including a wheelchair-bound stripper (Emmanuelle Chriqui), nude militants, a park ranger (Jesse Garcia) and a self-described flame lord (John Cho). But these encounters are easy compared to the relationship John tries to build with Virgil, a closed-off man with a bitter edge. The closer they get to solving the case, the more confident and assertive John becomes. He soon realizes that he cannot escape his gambling addiction by simply running away from it — he must face it head on.

“The film reaffirmed in a way that we are all human and we all have addictions, and in most cases we are going to choose our addictions over our life,” said Malco. “That is part of what makes us human and it doesn’t exclude us from our ability to have love, it doesn’t exclude us from our ability to have excitement and live healthy lives, so to speak. … It made me so much more empathetic for the flaws we have as people and it also made me see that those flaws are the commonality in humanity.”

That’s a pretty serious statement coming from a person many would describe as a funnyman. But according to Malco, he is anything but in real life.

“If you get a chance to look at me, with the exception of maybe ‘Baby Mama,’ I’m usually pretty committed to whatever the desired goal of the character is, externally and internally,” he said. “I don’t think that I am ever intentionally playing a role that is funny. I’m pretty serious and I think that a lot of the humor that I like and the humor I produce comes from very real circumstances. … Those philosophies came from real life instances and that was the insight at the time that I brought to it.”

In this film, however, his character is tight-lipped, which was a struggle for the actor. Tending to fill in the white space with unnecessary noise, as he did with past characters, here he did not. At times, when he wanted to ad-lib, he had to restrain himself. It was tough, but he became what was needed to bring the character to life.

While he was filming “Saint John,” Malco’s father lost a battle with pancreatic cancer. Coincidentally, he is now working on “Earthbound,” a tearjerker starring Kate Hudson as a woman who finds love while dying of cancer.

“It is an emotionally draining project. It really makes me cry every time we go to work,” said Malco. “It made me realize that the choice to live or die is made long before the moment of crisis. I got to bring a lot of that and a lot of myself into this role, and I’m getting to mourn in a way that I didn’t get to mourn … my father. This project is one of those instances where I am bringing a lot of me to the table.”