The two starred together in the 1997 crime drama “ One Eight Seven,” in which Collins played a young gangbanger opposite Jackson’s high school teacher, and have remained close friends ever since.Ĭollins embodies the “there are no small parts, only small actors” truism, Jackson said, citing “the preparation, the attention to detail, the love of the craft.” Collins is “the kind of actor that demands your best and gives you his.” Jackson, whom Collins considers a father figure. The promise was kept thanks in part to the advocacy of Samuel L. Instinctively switching to Spanish whenever quoting his grandfather, Collins recalled: “When he got cancer, the second he told me, ‘Mijo, I’ve had a life bigger that I could ever dreamt of, the only thing I never got was that pinche star,’ and I said, ‘Grandpa, I promise you I’m going to get you that star.’” Gonzalez-Gonzalez himself received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2011, five years after his death and decades after he first sought it. He would go on to work as a contract player for John Wayne, most notably in the seminal 1959 western “Rio Bravo.” The vaudeville-esque Mexican American diversions, like La Carpa Garcia, were popular during the first half of the 20th century, and Collins’s grandfather mostly performed for other Latinos working the fields in Texas. His eyes command the camera and our attention completely.”įor the actor, wandering through the set of “Nightmare Alley” felt like stepping into the bygone realm of his maternal grandfather, Pedro Gonzalez-Gonzalez, a proud Tejano and self-made entertainer whose career began in traveling tent shows, or carpas. “He has cinema in his bloodline and his eyes. Collins “has a cadence, rhythm and delivery that no one else has,” del Toro added. The final speech Jackson delivers in the film - about Jackson’s father being an angry man who only showed affection while drunk or gambling - came precisely from these bittersweet childhood memories.ĭel Toro turned to Collins for “Nightmare Alley” (their second collaboration, after the kaiju epic “ Pacific Rim”) because the actor “seems incapable of anything but being truthful and present and brimming with ideas,” the director said via email.
Streaming pirates 2005 how to#
When his father met friends at Hollywood Park, a racetrack nearby, he would occasionally let Collins tag along and taught him how to bet on horse races from a tender age. “But to have that same generosity with somebody who’s never acted before and in some cases is never going to act again speaks volumes to his quality as a person and artist.”Ĭollins, who was born and raised in the Los Angeles area, also channeled memories of his father, who, when sober enough, would take him and his sister to his trailer in Inglewood, Calif. “You might take it for granted when he’s being generous alongside Clint Eastwood” in “ The Mule,” Bentley said. The affecting banter in a hospital scene with an injured jockey, played by a real rider, Logan Cormier, resulted from the camaraderie he built over time with nonactors. On “Jockey,” Collins shares scenes with actual jockeys whom he tried to guide through the cinematic process with patience and space for spontaneity. I didn’t want to be treated special,” he explained, adding, “To be embraced by the very people you are portraying is the biggest gift that any actor could ask for.” At Turf Paradise, the Phoenix racetrack where the film was shot, he became a grunt, hanging around every day and helping with the horses, to rid himself of the performer label in the eyes of the real riders. But that was only the superficial transformation. To play Jackson, Collins dropped some weight from his already thin build to match the scrawny frame of a jockey.
For “Jockey,” Collins expanded his investment, and put his money on the line as an executive producer. The distinction isn’t only about screen time but also about his continuing collaboration with Bentley, a first-time director, and the producer Greg Kwedar, who cast him in his directorial debut, “ Transpecos,” a 2016 thriller in which he played one of three Border Patrol agents forced into an illicit drug-trafficking mission. During a recent interview at a restaurant in the Studio City section of Los Angeles, where he wore a fittingly unpretentious Pink Floyd T-shirt, Homeboy Industries cap and cozy flannel shirt, he explained, “I’ve had other leading roles, just not like this.”
0 kommentar(er)
