Linda Collins continues solidifying her positions as a major force in the independent film world with the critical success accorded her recent short film Perception. Directed and written by Andres Irias, the winner of Best International Film at the 2020 Brightside Tavern Shorts Film Festival in New York City tells two stories about immigration from very different points of view. One point of view is the story of a Honduran woman stressed by the apparent need to migrate from her home while the other point of view involves the story of an American teen taught to hate immigrants by her white supremacist family. Collins helped shaped this provocative short film as its Executive Producer but likewise contributed in front of the camera with her performance as Lauren, the teen’s mother. The critically lauded performance earned her a Best Supporting Actress nod at the most recent Omaha Latino Film Festival.
It’s a notable moment in a career that gains momentum with each passing year. Collins has pursued her performing and artistic ambitions since 2011 when she starred in the television series documentary Stalked: Someone’s Watching playing two different roles and has worked steadily since. She has made much of her mark in television over the last near-decade and has made appearances in a number of other television series documentaries such as 2013’s Celebrity Ghost Stories, Monsters Inside Me, and True Crime with Aphrodite Jones, among others.
URL: https://www.lindacollinsactress.com/
She has made a notable impression in a number of short films during this time as well. She played a mother in 2019’s In My Eyes, the story of a young man with Cerebral Palsy entering college consumed with anxiety and set herself apart from the pack in Sam Schmitz’s 2018 comedic short about two sisters and their incompetent boyfriends entitled Vitamins! She has branched out into full length films over the last few years beginning with director David Patrick Wilson’s 2017 television movie Three for the Road, a comedy about three wildly different women and their search for spiritual enlightenment. She has worked with director Terry Wickham on two very different horror films, Gruesome Threesome and Double Vision, further demonstrating her versatility as an actress.
Her musical talents make her stand out even more. Collins, like her mother, is a five star musical talent as a vocalist, pianist, and played principal horn in several orchestras such as the Winnipeg Symphony and Naples Philharmonic Orchestras. She has played in theatre orchestras for productions of Showboat starring Elaine Stritch and a Toronto production of Phantom of the Opera, among others. Her piano playing skills earned her coveted spots with many groups such as the Paul Taylor Dance Company, Chicago City Ballet, and American Wind Symphony Orchestra. Such well rounded talents are rare. More often than not, major talents focus on particular areas and excel there, but Linda Collins is an artistic polymath of a sort whose talents for self expression are exceeded only by her work ethic and daring. She gives everything of herself to each new project and we can expect her to continue to do so in the years to come.
Loretta Kim