Back in July of ’09 I was lucky enough to be able to interview Clifton Collins Jr.. (This is a redux of my interview that got scrapped at my old site’s host. Grr.)
At first, when I mention Clifton to friends, they say who? Yea, imagine that. My readers: Don’t you dare say who! In fact, by the end of this article, you’ll know who and in fact, you may have seen him in numerous films.
In fact you may have seen him most recently in films like J.J. Abrams Star Trek (as Ayel), Troy Duffy’s Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day (as Romeo), Mike Judge’s Extract (as Step), Crank: High Voltage (as El Huron) or The Perfect Game (as Cesar). If you dwell on just these roles alone, the diversity or range of roles and appearances is astounding. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
You can catch him in his upcoming roles in Paul Scheuring’s The Experiment (as Nix); Freeloaders or The FP.
When I had a chance to chat with Clifton, he was fun to talk with and we covered a lot of territory. He has a seemingly abundant amount of energy and a multitude of aspirations.
His aspirations don’t just include a myriad of roles, but he’s also produced or co-produced 4 of his on films: Tom Cool, Little Chenier, Rampage: The Hillside Strangler Murders and TV: The Movie. But wait, despite all that, he carves out the time to direct music videos. On his birthday he won “The Best Breakthrough Video of the Year” at the 2009 CMT Music Awards. The music video was for The Zac Brown Band.
I just finished up watching J.J.Abrams Star Trek. Clifton told me that his approach to portraying Ayel was to remember that as a commanding officer, he does his best to serve his boss, all the while keeping it close to his heart that there’s an underlying source of evil to the character.
Check out the time I spent with Clifton and what we chatted about:
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