Rita Hollingsworth, Veteran Hollywood Publicist, Dies at 61

Mike Barnes
·2 min read
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Rita Hollingsworth, the first-rate publicist and communications strategist who worked with the likes of Barbra Streisand, Robert Altman, Chen Kaige, the Carousel of Hope and St. Vincent Meals on Wheels over the years, has died. She was 61.

Hollingsworth died Nov. 16 of an intracerebral brain hemorrhage at Keck Hospital of USC, her husband of 37 years, Jeff Hollingsworth, told The Hollywood Reporter. The couple launched RMH Media in 1996.

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Hollingsworth cut her teeth with The Lee Solters Co., where clients included Streisand, Liza Minnelli, Michael Jackson, Neil Diamond, Barbara Davis’ Carousel of Hope and the Race to Erase MS.

At RMH Media, she helped bring major festival and market attention to such films as Alan Rudolph’s Afterglow (1997), Altman’s Cookie’s Fortune (1999), Michael Radford’s Dancing at the Blue Iguana (2000) and Chen’s Caught in the Web (2012) and Legend of the Demon Cat (2017).

RMH also represented New York Times best-selling author Reyna Grande.

RMH is now working with filmmaker Matthew Solomon on his documentary Reimagining Safety and with producer Catherine Gray and actress Sharon Gless on their documentary Show Her the Money, which is set to embark on a 50-city tour after winning awards at festivals this year.

Rita Maria Hollingsworth was born in East Los Angeles in 1962 and raised in nearby Whittier. She received her bachelor of arts degree from Whittier College and a double masters degree in Japanese language and diplomacy from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.

While at MIIS, she lived in Tokyo, where she mastered the language and worked with policy institutes conducting research focusing on cultural exchange and its positive effects on international relations.

In the early 1990s after her graduate studies, Hollingsworth held leadership roles in several civil rights organizations including MANAA, organizing with Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition against companies including McDonald’s, NBC and Paramount to protest anti-Asian hate and media bias.

Her husband said she was especially proud of her work in the nonprofit arena, representing the Angelus Student Film Festival; the Anthony & Jeanne Pritzker Family Foundation; Foster Care Counts; artworxLA; and St. Vincent Meals on Wheels, where she was a key voice behind the media strategy, communications and fundraising events of the largest privately funded senior nutrition program in the U.S.

In addition to her husband — they met at Whittier College more than 40 years ago and traveled and studied in Japan and Europe before returning to L.A. in 1991 — survivors include her cat Dom, her dog Auggie and “an adoring group of extended family and friends.”

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