His moderately successful career as an actor, supplemented by a vigorous outpouring of works for the stage, took him from Bordeaux in the south of France to Nantes in the west and Lille in the north and even into the Dutch Republic, where he met his wife.

At the outbreak of the Revolution in 1789 he dropped everything and returned to Paris, where his lead actor's voice, his writing skills, and his ability to organise and direct large-scale fêtes (civic feasts) were to make him famous.

As Collot was accused of excessive slaughter and destruction, and suspected his own arrest and execution, he opposed Robespierre during the Thermidorian Reaction in July 1794 while presiding over the Convention during the initial session.

Denounced a second time, he defended himself by pleading that he had acted for the Revolution, but, in March 1795, he was condemned with Bertrand Barère and Billaud-Varenne to transportation to Cayenne, French Guiana,[2] where he exerted a brief revolutionary influence before dying of yellow fever in 1796.

[4] Beginning his literary career in 1772 with the critically acclaimed Lucie, ou les Parents imprudents and finishing in 1792 with L'Aîné et le cadet, Collot was an accomplished, if minor, dramatist in a turbulent period of the French stage.

Before the Revolution, he wrote at least fifteen plays, of which ten survive, including Lucie, an adaptation of William Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor (titled, M. Rodomont, ou l'Amant loup-garou), and an adaptation of Pedro Calderón de la Barca's El Alcalde de Zalamea (titled, Il y a bonne justice, ou le Paysan magistrat), all three of which kept the stage throughout France for over a decade.