Gregor Collins (born August 22, 1976) is an American author, speaker and actor, best known for playing Matt in the mumblecore film Goodbye Promise , and for writing the memoir The Accidental Caregiver: How I Met, Loved and Lost Legendary Holocaust Refugee Maria Altmann . [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
Collins spent his childhood and adolescent years in the Washington, D.C. area and attended Centreville High School in Northern Virginia, where he was the top-seeded player on his school golf team. Collins subsequently received a golf grant to Ohio Wesleyan University, [6] played for a semester, then transferred to Miami University for two more semesters before taking a year off to work as a production assistant for the television series World Business Review with Caspar Weinberger. He completed his undergraduate studies at Florida State University, where he majored in Media Production. [7]
Collins moved to Los Angeles in 2000 to pursue a career in entertainment. He worked his way into producing various reality television shows such as Blind Date, Celebrity Mole: Yucatán , and E!. [8] [ unreliable source? ] In 2004 he began to pursue professional acting, eventually performing on stage, in television and in independent films, landing lead roles in the indie feature Night Before the Wedding and the improvised feature Goodbye Promise. [9]
In October 2014 Collins moved to the Murray Hill, Manhattan section of New York, living with and serving as a caregiver to Austrian painter Ruth Rogers-Altmann while he prepared a stage production of his book The Accidental Caregiver, about his experience caring for Rogers-Altmann's cousin Maria Altmann.
Collins has written essays for The Guardian, Focus (German magazine), Life Matters Media, Theater That Matters, Film Courage, Filmmaking Stuff, and has been a regular contributor to CINEMAEDITOR since 2013. [10] [11] [5]
In 2012 Collins published the memoir The Accidental Caregiver: How I Met, Loved and Lost Legendary Holocaust Refugee Maria Altmann, detailing his chance meeting and unusual bond with Gustav Klimt heiress Maria Altmann, [12] culminating in her death in early 2011. [13] [14] [15] [16]
Collins gives keynote speeches around the world sharing his experience as Altmann's caregiver, often working with the Women's International Zionist Organization. [17] [4] [18]
The Accidental Caregiver stageplay world premiered at the Robert Moss Theater in New York City on January 26, 2015, and was directed by British theatre director Alice Kornitzer. [19] The play also had a staged reading at the Austrian Cultural Forum New York on June 25, 2015, which was directed by Collins. Actors Christian Scheider and Rochelle Slovin read the parts of Gregor and Maria, respectively. [20] [21]
In November 2015 Collins wrote the Oscar Wilde-inspired dark comedy Pentonville for the Manhattan Repertory Theatre in New York, [22] which was directed by Jonathan Stuart Cerullo. [23] In June 2016 Collins created, co-wrote and co-produced the black comedy series Stories for the People's Improv Theater in New York. [24] [25]
In January 2017 Collins' play The Secret World Inside Me was developed and performed as a staged reading at the IATI Theater in New York. [26]
| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2004 | Passions | Bartender | TV-series |
| 2005 | Creepies 2 | Jeff Quest | Film |
| 2005 | Manhater | Jackson Botero | Film |
| 2005 | The Witch's Sabbath | Derek | Film |
| 2006 | The World's Astonishing News | Prison Guard | TV-series |
| 2006 | Blood Legend | Clark | Film |
| 2007 | Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide | Bouncer | TV-Series |
| 2007 | Ocean's Thirteen | Stickman | Film |
| 2007 | Loveless in Los Angeles | Peter | Film |
| 2009 | Night Before the Wedding | Bronco | Film |
| 2009 | Chloe and Keith's Wedding | Zach | Film |
| 2011 | Urban Jungle Dating Dilemmas | Matt | TV-Series |
| 2012 | Goodbye Promise | Matt | Film |
The Sound of Music is a musical with music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, and a book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse. It is based on the 1949 memoir of Maria von Trapp, The Story of the Trapp Family Singers. Set in Austria on the eve of the Anschluss in 1938, the musical tells the story of Maria, who takes a job as governess to a large family while she decides whether to become a nun. She falls in love with the children, and eventually their widowed father, Captain von Trapp. He is ordered to accept a commission in the German navy, but he opposes the Nazis. He and Maria decide on a plan to flee Austria with the children. Many songs from the musical have become standards, including "Do-Re-Mi", "My Favorite Things", "Edelweiss", "Climb Ev'ry Mountain", and the title song "The Sound of Music".
Walter Slezak was an Austrian-born film and stage actor active between 1922 and 1976. He mainly appeared in German films before migrating to the United States in 1930 and performing in numerous Hollywood productions.
Republic of Austria v. Altmann, 541 U.S. 677 (2004), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, or FSIA, applies retroactively to acts prior to its enactment in 1976.
Maria Altmann was an Austrian-American Jewish refugee from Austria, who fled her home country after it was annexed to the Third Reich. She is noted for her ultimately successful legal campaign to reclaim from the Government of Austria five family-owned paintings by the artist Gustav Klimt that were stolen by the Nazis during World War II.
Suzanne Marie Collins is an American author and television writer. She is best known as the author of the young adult dystopian book series The Hunger Games. She is also the author of the children's fantasy series The Underland Chronicles.
The Sound of Music is a 1965 American musical drama film produced and directed by Robert Wise from a screenplay written by Ernest Lehman, and starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer, with Richard Haydn, Peggy Wood, Charmian Carr, and Eleanor Parker. The film is an adaptation of the 1959 stage musical composed by Richard Rodgers, with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and a book by Lindsay and Crouse. It is based on the 1949 memoir The Story of the Trapp Family Singers by Maria von Trapp and is set in Salzburg, Austria. It is a fictional retelling of her experiences as governess to seven children, her eventual marriage with their father Captain Georg von Trapp, and their escape during the Anschluss in 1938.
Hubertus Czernin was an Austrian investigative journalist.
Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I is an oil painting on canvas, with gold leaf, by Gustav Klimt, completed between 1903 and 1907. The portrait was commissioned by the sitter's husband, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, a Viennese and Jewish banker and sugar producer. The painting was stolen by the Nazis in 1941 and displayed at the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere. The portrait is the final and most fully representative work of Klimt's golden phase. It was the first of two depictions of Adele by Klimt—the second was completed in 1912; these were two of several works by the artist that the family owned.
Adele Bloch-Bauer was a Viennese socialite, salon hostess, and patron of the arts from Austria-Hungary. A Jewish woman, she is most well known for being the subject of two of artist Gustav Klimt's paintings: Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I and Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II, and the fate of the paintings during and after the Nazi Holocaust. She has been called "the Austrian Mona Lisa."
Eric Randol Schoenberg is an American lawyer and genealogist, based in Los Angeles, California, specializing in legal cases related to the recovery of looted or stolen artworks, particularly those by the Nazi regime during the Holocaust.
Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II is a 1912 painting by Gustav Klimt. The work is a portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer (1881–1925), a Vienna socialite who was a patron and close friend of Klimt.
Raoul Aslan was an Austrian theater actor of Greek-Armenian ancestry.
Ari Roth is an American theatrical producer, playwright, director and educator. From 2014 to 2020 Roth served as the Artistic Director of Mosaic Theater Company of DC and was formerly the Artistic Director of Theater J at the Washington, D.C. Jewish Community Center from 1997 to 2014. Over 18 seasons at Theater J, he produced more than 129 productions and created festivals including "Locally Grown: Community Supported Art," "Voices from a Changing Middle East", and Theater J's acclaimed "Beyond The Stage" and "Artistic Director's Roundtable" series. In 2010, Roth was named as one of the Forward 50, honoring nationally prominent "men and women who are leading the American Jewish community into the 21st century, and in 2017 he was given the DC Mayor's Arts Award for Visionary Leadership. In 2021, Roth launched a new partnership with A. Lorraine Robinson, founding Voices Festival Productions, to be the new home for his long-running "Voices From a Changing Middle East Festival." Their first public event was a virtual benefit in support of "Ukrainian Playwrights Under Siege" in partnership with the Arts Club of Washington.
Woman in Gold is a 2015 biographical drama film directed by Simon Curtis and written by Alexi Kaye Campbell. The film stars Helen Mirren, Ryan Reynolds, Daniel Brühl, Katie Holmes, Tatiana Maslany, Max Irons, Charles Dance, Elizabeth McGovern, and Jonathan Pryce.
Bernhard Altmann (1888–1960) was an Austrian textile manufacturer whose business was stolen and whose family's art collection was looted by Nazis because of their Jewish origins. He introduced cashmere wool to North America on a mass scale in 1947.
Stealing Klimt is a 2007 documentary film about Maria Altmann's attempt to recover five Gustav Klimt paintings stolen from her family by the Nazis in 1938, from Austria.
The Accidental Caregiver: How I Met, Loved, and Lost Legendary Holocaust Refugee Maria Altmann is a 2012 memoir by Gregor Collins, recounting the three years he was a caregiver for Maria Altmann, as well as a stageplay, which premiered at the Robert Moss Theater in New York City on January 26, 2015.
Jonathan Stuart Cerullo is an American director and choreographer, executive producer, and former performer. Cerullo is known for his work on Broadway, Off-Broadway, and regionally. He has also worked in circus, film, and television.
The Theatre of War Project is an offering of social impact theater company Theater of War Productions that presents readings of Sophocles' Ajax and Philoctetes for military and civilian communities.
Rochelle Slovin is an American stage actress, and founding director of Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens, New York City, which she led for 30 years, from 1981 until 2011. A native New Yorker, Slovin was educated at Cornell University and the Columbia Business School. She began her career in the 1960s as a performer in New York’s avant-garde theater, appearing often at La Mama Experimental Theatre Club and other off-off-Broadway venues.
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