Gregor Collins

Gregor Collins
Collins at the premiere of Goodbye Promise in 2012
Born	Gregor Grant Collins Mountain View, California, United States
Occupation	Actor, Writer, Producer
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Florida State University (BA)
Years active	2000–present

Gregor Collins (born August 22, 1976) is an American writer, actor, and producer. He starred as Matt in the 2012 independent film Goodbye Promise and is the author of the memoir The Accidental Caregiver: How I Met, Loved and Lost Legendary Holocaust Refugee Maria Altmann. He lives and works in New York.^[1]

Early life

Gregor was born in Mountain View, California. He 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,^[2] 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.^[3]

Career

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, The Mole season 4, and E!.^[4] In 2004 he began to pursue professional acting, eventually performing on stage, in television and in independent films, landing lead roles in the indie films Night Before the Wedding^[5][6] and the improvised feature Goodbye Promise.^[7] In October 2014 Collins moved to New York to prepare a stage production of his book The Accidental Caregiver.

Collins has written essays for various online publications like The Guardian and Focus (German magazine), and has contributed to CINEMAEDITOR Magazine since 2013.^[8][9]

Books

The Accidental Caregiver

In 2012 Collins published the memoir The Accidental Caregiver: How I Met, Loved and Lost Legendary Holocaust Refugee Maria Altmann, meticulously detailing their chance meeting and unusual bond,^[10] culminating in Altmann's death in early 2011. The self-published book has been a top seller in a number of categories on Amazon.^{[11][12][13][14]}

In 2015 a Polish translation of the book was published.^[15]

Stage Plays

The Accidental Caregiver stageplay world premiered at the Robert Moss Theater in New York City on January 26, 2015.^[16] The play had a staged reading at the Austrian Cultural Forum New York on June 25, 2015. Actor Christian Scheider and Actor and Museum of the Moving Image (New York City) founder Rochelle Slovin read the parts of Gregor and Maria, respectively.^[17][18]

Filmography

Gregor Collins and Maria Altmann, 2010

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Gregor Collins.

• Official website
• Interview with Gregor Collins about Maria Altmann, Austria and Nazi Art Theft on Media Mayhem with host Allison Hope Weiner.