It was probably Sunshine Cleaning that made me dig Clifton Collins, Jr. I liked the way he took a role that was pretty dumb on the page and made it into something I could latch onto without feeling totally manipulated. It was fun seeing him stand around menacingly in Star Trek (again, the script) and so now I’m really curious as to what the hell he might be doing in Kenneth Branagh’s Thor.

The actor posted two messages in the last 24 hours about the film, via Twitter. First, “Studying my ass off for THOR, gonna be a late night, well worth the loss of sleep!” then “…hitting THOR hard this mornin!” Suggests there’s an audition today for Branagh’s picture. But for what role? I’m not going to assume that Collins doesn’t take his work seriously, but if he’s really got to research the role there’s the implication that it’s more sizable than some run of the mill antagonist. But he’s not exactly the Asgardian type, right?

Hopefully bringing these to wider attention won’t hurt his chances. I’d like to see him (a) get the role and (b) develop into a reliable character actor. (Give him a decade and the guy is going to have an awesome face.) That’s way better than having him sitting around following country music luminaries and David Faustino on Twitter.

Thanks to Justin for pointing this out.