Career

Collins' first acting role was the part of a four year-old girl opposite his mother when he was five years-old. The play was three hours long and they performed in a tiny theatre at University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He had one line, "Yes I can. I can believe it because it's true."

However, after his brush with politics, Collins decided on a whim to take an acting class. He soon found himself in the midst of a career change. He got a call for a role in Barry Levinson's Liberty Heights, and then landed a part in Girl, Interrupted. Changing his name to the now-familiar Misha Collins, he moved to Los Angeles. Collins was next seen on an episode of NYPD Blue before he was cast in the series Seven Days as Sergei Chubais. He gained much popularity in 2002, when he appeared on Par 6.

Having travelled in Russia and mastered the accent, he found this skill helped him win the role of the villainous assassin Alexis Drazen in Season 1 of the TV series 24. Collins filmed two movies in 2003, Moving Alan and Finding Home. He had a small role in The Crux, and later worked on the 2005 television production titled 20 Things to Do Before You're 30. Also that year, he landed a part on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and played Bret on three episodes of ER.

Collins became even more recognized when he got the role of Paul Bernardo in Karla in 2006. The film caused a lot of controversy in Canada, as the crime was still fresh in their minds. Collins has said about playing the role: "Up until the first violent scene, I was unsure of whether I was going to be able to put it off. And when we started shooting some of the more violent scenes, I was really surprised to see lurking somewhere in the depths of my psyche were these seeds of violence that I had never given any fertilizer or water to, that had never sprouted in any way in my ordinary life, and yet there was something I could tap into there. And that really took me aback. Really was frightening."

Collins followed this up with an appearance on Monk. He was also seen on NCIS: Naval Criminal Investigative Service, as well as on Close to Home. After his portrayal of Joey Wheeler in Reinventing the Wheelers, he was seen on Without a Trace, The Grift, and 2008's Over Her Dead Body. He had a small appearance on Nip/Tuck as Manny Skerritt, a patient wanting a penis reduction as his was long enough to suck it himself, especially as he was a yoga instructor and could be very flexible.

In 2008, Collins was cast in the role of Castiel on the hit show Supernatural. There was great secrecy around the introduction of the character. When the role was being cast, it was advertised as being for a demon. It was only at the audition that Collins found out Castiel was an angel. After appearing in thirteen episodes as a guest star in Season 4, Collins is now credited as a season regular for the current fifth season.

Collins recently starred in the Syfy original movie Stonehenge Apocalypse.

   In 2008, Collins was associate producer on Loot, a documentary about two young American soldiers who loot valuable treasures and    hide them overseas before returning to civilian life in America. Sixty years later, back in America, neither man seems remorseful about    his war crimes. Both want to recover the treasures they perceive as their own.