He was the son of Count Leopold Filip Kolowrat-Krakowsky [cs] (1852–1910) and his wife Nadine Freiin von Huppmann-Valbella (1858–1942), the daughter of a successful cigarette manufacturer from Saint Petersburg.

The reason "Sascha" Kolowrat-Krakowsky was born in the US is described in a letter of March 30, 1984, from his nephew Count Colloredo-Mansfeld to the Austrian film scholar Walter Fritz: Due to a supposed or actual 'defamation' of his bride, my grandfather [Leopold] shot his adversary, a Prince of Auersperg, in a duel, which had to be atoned for by an exile of several years, according to the customs of that time.

After the death of his father in 1910 and the inheritance of his estates in Bohemia, Alexander Kolowrat founded the Sascha-Film factory and a film laboratory at his castle Groß Meierhöfen (today Velké Dvorce) in Pfraumberg (Přimda).

The high points of his artistic work were the productions of monumental silent movies like Sodom and Gomorrah (1922) or Die Sklavenkönigin (1924), both directed by Michael Curtiz, on the Laaer Berg in Vienna-Favoriten.

An enthusiastic mobilist he financed the development of a lightweight sports car ("Sascha-Wagen") designed by the Austro-Daimler engineer Ferdinand Porsche, which ran at the 1922 Targa Florio with Alfred Neubauer at the wheel.