In general, Collins doesn’t look at his career’s focus as playing characters from one race or another. He explains, “My goal isn’t to not play Latinos or to only play white characters; my goal is to play complicated, interesting characters that can inspire thought and emotion, that can help people grow and, at the end of the day, entertain. My joy comes from creating characters I haven’t been able to do before. Like, in Traffic, there are so many great roles, but I wanted to play Franky Flowers because he was complicated: He was gay, he was a cocaine addict, his character was based on an actual assassin. They wanted me to read for all these Latino roles, and I get it. Steven Soderbergh is a huge hero of mine, but I told him I want to play this character because he’s complex.”
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