Actor, producer and director Clifton Collins Jr. has signed with CAA.
Collins most recently starred in and executive produced the independent feature “Jockey.” The film premiered in competition at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, with Collins earning the Dramatic Special Jury Award for best actor.
Variety’s Peter Debruge referred to Collins’ work as a “career-best” role, writing that the actor, “walks like a jockey; he talks like a jockey; heck, he even rides like a jockey — which is a remarkable transformation for a character actor who’s been waiting far too long for such a shot in the saddle.”
To prepare to play Jackson Silva, an aging rider dealing with the physical and emotional baggage of his career, the actor shed 20 pounds to match the slender build of a professional jockey and pushed himself to embody the loner character.
“I cut myself off from the world,” Collins told Variety ahead of the film’s Sundance premiere. “I talked to three people the entire time I was gone. I like to go deep.”
Directed by Clint Bentley from a script by Bentley and Greg Kwedar, Collins stars in the film opposite Molly Parker (Jackson’s trainer, Ruth), Moisés Arias (who plays a 19-year-old prodigy named Gabriel, who idolizes Jackson and just might be his son), Logan Cormier and Colleen Hartnett. The movie is the second collaboration between Collins, Bentley and Kwedar, after the 2016 award-winning film “Transpecos.”
“Jockey” will go on to screen at the Toronto International Film Festival and the Hamptons International Film Festival. Sony Pictures Classics announced that the movie will be released in theaters in New York and Los Angeles on Dec. 29, before expanding nationwide in the following weeks. “Jockey is produced by Bentley, Kwedar and Nancy Schafer and executive produced by Larry Kalas, Larry Kelly, Linda and Jon Halbert, Cheryl and Walt Penn, Genevieve and Mark Crozier, Cindy and John Greenwood, Ann Grimes and Jay Old, Benjamin Fuqua, Jordy Wax, and Collins.
Collins will next be seen starring opposite Colin Farrell in A24’s “After Yang,” which premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, from visionary director Kogonada; and Guillermo Del Toro’s “Nightmare Alley,” alongside the all-star cast of Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Toni Collette, Michael Shannon and Willem Dafoe.
His most recent film and television credits also include Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” and Alma Har’el’s “Honey Boy,” as well as HBO’s “Westworld” and “The Stand” for CBS All Access.
He continues to be represented by Mark Morikawa and David Schiff at MGMT. Entertainment, Wolf-Kasteler Public Relations, and David Krintzman at Morris Yorn Barnes Levine Krintzman Rubenstein Kohner & Gellman.
Additional reporting by Brent Lang.