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Gregor Collins | |
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 Collins in Soho in 2019 | |
| Born | |
| Alma mater | Florida State University |
| Occupations | |
| Notable work | |
| Website | https://www.gregorcollins.com/ |
Gregor Collins is an American author, speaker, producer and former actor, most known for writing The Accidental Caregiver, a memoir about the three years he spent with Maria Altmann. [1] [2] [3]
Collins was born in Mountain View, California and spent his childhood and adolescent years in the Washington, D.C. area. He attended Centreville High School in Northern Virginia, where he played on the golf team. Collins subsequently received a golf scholarship to Ohio Wesleyan University, 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. [4]
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 , Girls Gone Wild , Ripley's Believe it or Not , E! at the Emmy Awards , Welcome to Myrtle Manor and Counting Cars . [5] 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, which the Los Angeles Times called a "simple, richly emotional look at a failed actor's introspective last days in Hollywood." [6]
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 about Ruth and Maria for The Guardian , Focus , Huffington Post and others, and has been a regular contributor to CinemaEditor since 2013. [7] [8]
In 2012 Collins released the memoir The Accidental Caregiver: How I Met, Loved and Lost Legendary Holocaust Refugee Maria Altmann , detailing his chance meeting and unusual bond with Jewish émigré Maria Altmann, [9] culminating in her death in early 2011. [10] [11] [12]
In 2018 Collins was the keynote speaker for events called Love, Maria in New York, Miami, Melbourne, Sydney and Perth - all sponsored by the Women's International Zionist Organization - and in 2019 was the keynote speaker for an event called Te Amo, Maria at the Jewish Cultural and Community Center in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. [13] [14] [15]
The Accidental Caregiver Part 2 was published in 2020 by Balboa Press, a division of Hay House, and follows Collins' life after Maria's death and his accidental speaking tour across Australia with WIZO. As of 2024, Collins is working on a third and final installment of the caregiver series. [16]
The Accidental Caregiver stageplay premiered at Playwrights Horizons' Robert Moss Theater in New York City on January 26, 2015, and was directed by British theatre director Alice Kornitzer. [17] 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. [18]
In November 2015 Collins wrote the Oscar Wilde-inspired dark comedy Pentonville for the Manhattan Repertory Theatre in New York, [19] which was directed by Jonathan Stuart Cerullo. [20] In June 2016 Collins created, co-wrote and co-produced the black comedy series Stories for Ali Farahnakian and the People's Improv Theater in New York. [21] [22]
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.[ citation needed ]
Collins resides in Arlington, Virginia and has a Vizsla named Lucy. [23]
| 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 |
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Adele Bloch-Bauer was a Viennese socialite, salon hostess, and patron of the arts from Austria-Hungary, married to sugar industrialist Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer. 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."
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