It’s hard to say precisely when Clifton Collins Jr. started to make an impact, but it’s safe to say his career moved up a notch after 2000, when he played the coked-out gay hitman Francisco “Frankie Flowers” Flores in Steven Soderbergh’s Oscar hit Traffic.
Since then, he’s established himself has one of the best character actors in the business, inexplicably missing out on Oscar love for his performance as real-life killer Perry Smith in 2005’s Capote.
That oversight will hopefully be corrected this year with Jockey, the Sundance hit for which he shrank to 143lb to play the role of ageing rider Jackson Silva.DEADLINE: How did you get involved with the Jockey production?CLIFTON COLLINS JR.: I had a working relationship with Greg Kwedar and