SPOTLIGHT
A SURE BET
Clifton Collins Jr. turns in a thunderous performance in Jockey.
and an up-and-coming jockey rookie who claims to be his illegitimate son. “My Dad used to take me to the race track, Hollywood Park,” says Collins, who grew up in Los Angeles. “We’d stop at the liquor store, he’d get his brown bag, and then bid on the horses.” His grandfather, Pedro González González, was a contestant on Groucho Marx’s You Bet Your Life. John Wayne culled him in Clifton Collins Jr. after watching him on the quiz show, and it led to countless Western spots. The Jockey drama, which has received rave advance reviews, has been compared to The Wrestler, starring Mickey Rourke as an aging grappler. It blows open the stables on what the day-to-day world of a professional jockey is really like. Unlike glamorized equestrian-based films, it is a dulling and strenuous kick in the head. To authenticate that world, the movie used real-life pro jockeys as actors. Collins picked up their vernacular, and dispelled a few misconceptions. Though he is 5-foot-9, more inches than is typical of a championship jockey, he says that, for one, some of them were taller than him. “Some are in their 70s. There is a brotherhood in the fold, but there is fierce competition. “I learned a lot by example,” he says. “I didn’t want to be an actor-y guy to them. I didn’t officially ask questions. I just took in their language and manners, taking notes
Why the long face? According to actor Clifton Collins Jr., the thoroughbred horses in Jockey, which won him Best Actor at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, were groomed, fed and bedded more accommodatingly than the twee-sized cast and crew of the Clint Bentley-directed independent picture, premiering on the East Coast at this year’s Hamptons International Film Festival. “We had a crew of 10, no hair, no makeup, none of that,” he says with a degree of pride. The film utilizes sunrises and sunsets in a way that should nab cinematography awards. Simple: dusk to dawn, all in a day’s work, economical ingenuity. Yet the 51-year-old Screen Actors Guild-winning costar of films such as Capote (he portrayed serial killer Perry Smith) and Traffic, and TV shows such as Westworld, would not have had it any other way. “I told my agent I would block his calls if he didn’t let me do this part,” he says. “I didn’t care if my house burned down, I’m doing it,” says Collins, who is single. “I was engaged once, then, un-engaged.” He lives with his puppy, an Australian blue heeler, “like the one in Mad Max,” he says. Inspired by his childhood riding western—Collins’s grandfather rode the saddle as an actor with John Wayne—he passionately wanted the job playing a veteran stakes-winner questioning his skills and his ravaged body, 92
Sony Pictures Classics
BY STEVE GARBARINO
