Executive producer and actress Linda Collins recently accepted an award for Best International Film award at the Brightside Tavern Shorts Film Festival for the short film Perception, an Andres Irias written and directed film approaching the subject of race and immigration from two perspectives. Collins plays Lauren, the mother of an American teen taught to hate immigrants by her white supremacist family. It’s the high water mark in a career in front of and behind the camera for Collins and, despite its relatively brief length, reveals Collins as an artist who, despite her immense capacity for entertaining audiences, has ambitions far greater than simply providing audiences with pleasing diversions.
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No one should be surprised. Collins, since first debuting in 2011, applies herself to her craft with singular dedication and an obvious respect for art’s transformative powers. She graduated from Northern Illinois University and studied at Temple and Roosevelt Universities. Her musical talents served her well in the theatrical world thanks to the skill she displays as a vocalist, pianist, and brass. Those talents landed her plum spots in theatre orchestras for productions of Phantom of the Opera in Toronto, Canada as well as revivals of Showboat and Fiddler on the Roof featuring Elaine Stritch and Herschel Bernardi respectively.
She, likewise, distinguished herself in an assortment of genre driven features such as director Terry Wickham’s horror films Double Vision and Gruesome Threesome. Other projects like David Patrick Wilson’s Three for the Road, a film about three independent intelligent women from strikingly different backgrounds coming together in a quest for spiritual enlightenment, highlighted her comedic talents. Collins’ talents are varied and she observes none of the arbitrary restrictions many performers, male or female, impose on themselves.
It is easy to understand why. She has demonstrated an instinct for performing since her earliest years. The St. Louis born daughter of an Air Force officer father and musician mother, Collins displayed an innate skill for acting and music leading her to participate alongside her siblings performing plays for their parents during their grade school years. Many of the finest performers stand out for reasons such as this – the need to express themselves like this is irrepressible and woven into their DNA. Performance, for Collins, is as natural as breathing.
TWITTER: https://twitter.com/Linda_Collins
However, working in front of and behind the camera isn’t all. Linda Collins is, likewise, a passionate advocate for the arts in general. She earned a national appointment of three years serving as a member of the Canadian Advisory Committee on the Status of the Artist from Canadian Minister of Heritage Flora McDonald and an appointment as Assistant to the International President of the American Federation of Musicians in New York City from AFM International President Tom Lee. Linda Collins has the sort of devotion and skill artists of real staying power boast rather than the fly by the night desire for fame common to too many working today. It is no stretch to imagine she will continue expanding her impressive body of work for many years to come.
Jodi Marxbury