Clifton Collins Jr: ​‘I nev­er used pep­per­mints with the horses’

Clifton Collins Jr is one of the most well-versed char­ac­ter actors in the busi­ness and his lat­est film, Jock­ey, is a career-best per­for­mance that sees him final­ly get the cred­it he’s always deserved. With unflinch­ing ded­i­ca­tion and unpar­al­leled com­mit­ment, Collins threw him­self head-first into this char­ac­ter study of an age­ing jock­ey whose retire­ment is staved off by the arrival of a race­horse that is a sure bet for victory.

LWLies: You’ve worked with the writ­ers of Jock­ey pre­vi­ous­ly but the char­ac­ter of Jack­son was writ­ten specif­i­cal­ly for you. What is it like com­ing aboard a project in this context?

Collins: We had a pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ence on Transpecos, a film that Greg Kwedar direct­ed and Clint Bent­ley pro­duced, so it was through that col­lab­o­ra­tion we got to learn about one anoth­er. To con­tin­ue to build upon our process that was already devel­op­ing a quick short­hand is a dream sce­nario for an actor. When I got the ini­tial script it was six­ty pages but they knew so much about my per­son­al past. [Jock­ey] is a lit­tle piece of all three of us, Greg, Clint and myself.

How did you go about inte­grat­ing your­self into this live race­course and get­ting famil­iar with the nuances of the extreme­ly com­pet­i­tive horse rac­ing community?

Extreme humil­i­ty. I want­ed to blend in. I didn’t want to be the ​‘actor guy.’ That said, I went to great lengths to do things to help peo­ple feel com­fort­able. I’ll do all the ground­work, hap­pi­ly and will­ing­ly. I want to know what that work is because you don’t start at the top, you start at the bot­tom. Also, because we were a skele­ton crew it allot­ted for a great deal of anonymi­ty which is anoth­er gift. No one’s sin­gling us out, I had peo­ple com­ing up say­ing ​‘I didn’t see you on the form, I’m gonna put some mon­ey on you.’ They don’t expect to see an actor there and with the size of the crew, it prob­a­bly looked like a doc­u­men­tary crew. It made it eas­i­er to accli­mate, to delve into that world and soak up as much as you can.

It was very dif­fi­cult to leave them. I still speak to some of the jock­eys today but I miss it. The peo­ple and the jock­eys have so much heart. There’s some­thing very attrac­tive about being with peo­ple that are so hum­ble and resilient and will­ing to risk every­thing for that one win­ning moment.

It’s such a dan­ger­ous sport, a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent phys­i­cal­i­ty with han­dling hors­es and sit­ting in the sad­dle com­pared to horse riding.

You’re right. You’re sit­ting in the sad­dle up to the gate then you’re up and pret­ty much on your feet in the stir­rups where­as on West­world you’re seat­ed in com­fort­able sad­dles. The sad­dles on quar­ter hors­es are like lit­tle g‑strings with a bit of foam in them. When you get into that gate, that’s half the dan­ger right there. The sheer antic­i­pa­tion of hear­ing the hors­es load­ing up and the gate lock­ing up: clack clack clack. It’s pal­pa­ble. You’re in sync with your horse and when that last gate clos­es you know you’ve got any­where from a half-sec­ond to maybe two sec­onds which get stretched out to a minute in your brain because your anx­i­ety is so high. It’s a lot.

There are some amaz­ing scenes between your char­ac­ter and Mol­ly Parker’s, the cracks in his sto­ic mas­culin­i­ty begin­ning to open. How was build­ing the long-term jock­ey-train­er rela­tion­ship with her in the short amount of film­ing time?

We shot the film in twen­ty days and I got there two weeks ear­ly to hang out with the jock­eys and to work­shop the screen­play with Clint and Greg. That all said, pri­or to get­ting out there I did exten­sive research via YouTube find­ing obscure inter­views of train­ers and jock­eys, get­ting the beat on that rela­tion­ship. The fin­er nuances come from actu­al­ly being on a work­site and run­ning dia­logue explor­ing scenes, moments, and pos­si­bil­i­ties. When you have an actress who is as tal­ent­ed as Mol­ly Park­er, I mean, she brings it all. It’s almost effort­less act­ing with her. She’s a force to reck­on with. When they call action, boy look­out, because it’s *fin­ger guns* boom!

How did you approach that col­lab­o­ra­tion with Bent­ley for his direc­to­r­i­al debut along­side the fact that this is a per­son­al sto­ry to him?

First-time direc­tors and their first films, there’s so much you can find out about the film­mak­er just through the project. That always plays in my head because some­times you’re so deep in the for­est you’re not real­ly sure what the path is. [Jock­ey] is very dear to his heart so you always want to hon­our the mate­r­i­al and help it to blos­som and bear the fruit you think it should be bearing.

Jock­ey feels a part of this cin­e­mat­ic west­ern renais­sance. Your grand­fa­ther, Pedro Gon­za­lez Gon­za­lez, starred in a num­ber of West­erns, name­ly Rio Bra­vo. With Jock­ey and West­world, is the west­ern a genre you find your­self drawn to per­son­al­ly and professionally?

With­out a doubt. I would love to do a hard­core west­ern. On West­world, we had some of the best horse wran­glers this busi­ness has to offer. Our hors­es were high­ly, high­ly trained, it’s like the accu­ra­cy of a Porsche. It’s so metic­u­lous where­as with quar­ter hors­es you just hang on for dear life. They’re in sync with you but it’s a dif­fer­ent thing, you’re just a pas­sen­ger and not dri­ving. I’ve learnt their per­son­al­i­ties and char­ac­ters that I didn’t quite know on West­world because of the nature of our stuff [on Jock­ey] you had to be hyper in touch with these hors­es. I nev­er used pep­per­mints. I always want­ed my rela­tion­ship with the hors­es to be organ­ic as sil­ly as that might sound. And those wild mus­tangs that appeared in the riv­er, there was no horse wran­gler. The sun was going down and I had that moment with a beau­ti­ful white mare.

That scene wasn’t planned?

It actu­al­ly was writ­ten in the script. I remem­ber that morn­ing look­ing at Greg Kwedar and going ​‘ok Greg, so today we’re going to go to the park with­out a horse wran­gler and these wild mus­tangs are going to cross and we’re going to catch it all on film?’ It sounds so absurd! I remem­ber Greg real­is­ing what a big ask that was and just shrug­ging his shoul­ders. For that mag­ic shot we got, I was already walk­ing back to base­camp and had this moment with the white mare that just stopped me in my tracks, for the obvi­ous rea­son I mean it could’ve run me over. It was just her and I, we locked eyes and the whole world dis­ap­peared. It was one of the most mag­i­cal moments of the entire year for me.

You choose some great direc­tors to work with. What are you look­ing for from roles at this point in your career as you choose a real mix of stu­dio and indie films?

It doesn’t mat­ter how big the char­ac­ter is as long as he’s got a good arc. More­so, the film­mak­er. When you have a beau­ti­ful col­lab­o­ra­tor and also men­tor like Guiller­mo del Toro it’s hard to say no. You don’t want to ever say no. It doesn’t mat­ter how big or how small, any chance to be with the man and get any bit of his pix­ie dust on you that will make you a bet­ter artist and in turn a bet­ter human is a beau­ti­ful gift.

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