Bob Colacello


Bob Colacello is an American writer. Born in Bensonhurst, New York, and raised in Plainview, Long Island, he graduated from the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in 1969, and also has an MFA degree in film criticism from Columbia University Graduate School of the Arts.

Early endeavors and ''Interview'' magazine

Colacello began his writing career around 1969, when he began publishing film reviews in the Village Voice weekly. As a graduate student in the Film department at Columbia University in New York, his first publications doubled as his class essays and homework assignments. In 1970, Colacello wrote a review of Andy Warhol's film Trash, which he hailed as a "great Roman Catholic masterpiece". This review garnered the attention of Warhol, and Paul Morrissey, the director of many of Warhol's films, who approached Colacello to write for Interview magazine, a new art/film/fashion magazine Warhol had recently begun to publish. Colacello was made editor of Interview within six months and, for the next 12 years, remained directly involved in all aspects of life and business at The Factory, Warhol's infamous studio, as he developed the magazine into one of the best-known lifestyle magazines of the time. As Colacello himself writes in , Warhol suggested Colacello change his name to Bob Cola, in order to sound more "pop."

Biographical writings

After his tenure with Interview, Colacello began writing for Vanity Fair magazine, and has been a regular contributor since, writing extended profiles on a wide range of public personalities, including Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles, Balthus, Rudolf Nureyev, Liza Minnelli, Estée Lauder, Doris Duke, and Naomi Campbell. Colacello has also established himself as one of the most prolific biographical writers in the United States. He is the author of ', about the social and political rise of Ronald Reagan and his wife Nancy Reagan. His memoir of working with Andy Warhol in the 1970s and early 1980s, titled ', was called the "best-written and the most killingly observed" book on the subject by The New York Times.

Books