She designed costumes for theater and opera productions, wrote plays, acted in movies and had recently moved to Los Angeles to work as a production assistant on the new Batman movie.
Crystal Marie Gomes, 28, was just beginning to realize her potential in the performing arts field when the former Saco resident and Thornton Academy graduate died last week.
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Her father, who lives in Saco, said his daughter collapsed at her home in Los Angeles.
Her doctors said she appears to have suffered a heart attack.
“Everyone who knew her had such high expectations because she was successful at everything she did,” Edmund Gomes said. “She was just starting to move ahead in her career.”
Born in Auburn, N.Y., Ms. Gomes moved to Saco with her family in 1997.
In 2001, Ms. Gomes graduated with high honors from Thornton Academy, where she acted in a number of school plays.
“She started out wanting to be an actress. She was in just about every play at Thornton Academy,” her father recalled.
After high school, she enrolled at Boston College, graduating in the top 5 percent of her class in 2005 with a degree in theater arts. She wrote the scripts for several college plays.
After graduation, Ms. Gomes worked in advertising sales support for Time Inc., including Fortune and Money magazines in Boston.
Gomes said his daughter became interested in costume design at Boston College, which led her to eventually enroll at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
“Crystal decided she’d rather work on costumes than pursue an acting career,” her father recalled.
While at Carnegie Mellon — the master’s program entails three years of study — Ms. Gomes did theater and opera costume design for the Pittsburgh Opera.
Ms. Gomes designed all the costumes that were used in Carnegie Mellon’s 2010 production of “Richard III.”
She earned her master of fine arts degree in costume design from Carnegie Mellon in 2011.
In recent years, she also had the opportunity to work on a few movies, including a job as production assistant on “The Next Three Days,” a 2010 movie starring Russell Crowe and Elizabeth Banks.
Her father said she got a brief role in “The Great Debaters,” a 2007 film starring Denzel Washington and Forest Whitaker.
Her latest job, as a production assistant for Magnus Rex Production Co., took her to Los Angeles where she worked on the new Batman movie — “The Dark Knight Rises.”
She moved to Los Angeles about a month ago to pursue her career and to be closer to her boyfriend, Hunter Seagrove. Seagrove was with her when she collapsed Feb. 21.
“He was the love of her life,” Gomes said.
Her parents, Edmund and Joan Gomes, live in Saco. Gomes said his daughter would call them every day from Los Angeles to check in on their well-being.
“She was a brilliant star, but not in the theatrical sense,” her father said. “It was when you walked into a room and you met her, you loved her.”
Gomes said he and his wife have been overwhelmed by the outpouring of calls, emails and Facebook messages from former friends and colleagues, who live across the country.
He said the Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama has created a scholarship fund in his daughter’s name.
A Thornton Academy classmate posted a short essay on Ms. Gomes’ Facebook page that had been written by her while she was in high school.
Gomes said he was amazed that the classmate had kept his daughter’s essay, “The Emotional Spandex Reasoning Theory.” The essay explores the emotional content of the human heart, suggesting that no one really knows how much it can hold.
Part of the essay reads, “I bet that hearts grow to meet the love you need them to hold. The people with the non-stretchy hearts are the ones with all the problems. I would like to think of my own heart as a pair of spandex biker shorts; it keeps getting bigger and bigger without any regard for how fatty and riddled with cellulite my love and care are. The material gets a little thinner, sure, but that’s a small price to pay for stretchiness.”
Visiting hours will be held from 4 to 8 p.m. Thursday at the Conroy-Tully Crawford South Portland Chapel, 1024 Broadway. A celebration of her life will take place at the Ramada Inn Conference Center in Saco on Friday, after morning prayers at the South Portland chapel.
Staff Writer Dennis Hoey can be contacted at 791-6365 or at:
dhoey@pressherald.com
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