Actors Art

Based on years of astonishing research, Natalie Wood (previously published as Natasha) raises the curtain on Wood’s turbulent life. Award-winning author Suzanne Finstad conducted nearly 400 interviews with Natalie Wood’s family, close friends, legendary costars, lovers, film crews, and virtually everyone connected to her death. Through these firsthand accounts, Finstad reconstructs a life of emotional abuse and exploitation, of unimaginable fame, great loneliness, and loss.

Gene Wilder is one of the great comic actors who defined the 1970s and 1980s in movies. From his work with Woody Allen, to the rich group of movies he made with Mel Brooks, to his partnership on screen with Richard Pryor, Wilder's performances are still discussed and celebrated today.

Mike Epps is one of America’s favorite and funniest people, but the path to fame was paved with opportunities to mess it up. And mess it up he did. Growing up in “Naptown” - what people who live there really call rough-around-the-edges Indianapolis - Epps was drawn to a life of crime, but as he quickly discovered, stealing and dealing didn’t really fit his sweet sensibilities. Not to mention he wasn’t very good at it - take, for example, the day he had to call the cops on himself when a dog wouldn’t let him leave a house he was burgling.

In 2006, Forbes magazine ranked Tom Cruise as the most powerful celebrity in the world. With three Golden Globe awards, three Academy Award nominations, and 27 films with an average box office gross of nearly $100 million, People magazine's choice for the "Sexiest Man Alive" in 1990 is unquestionably one of the biggest movie stars of our time.

A Voice Actor's Guide to Audio Description Performance is a comprehensive resource written to enhance the quality of audio description (AD) for blind audiences. It emphasizes the importance of treating AD as a craft, focusing on creating immersive experiences rather than cutting costs. The guide covers understanding the needs of blind audiences, mastering AD performance techniques, collaborating effectively with AD writers, and integrating AD into the production process.

In 2001, Ian McKellen put on the robe and pointed hat of a wizard named Gandalf and won a place in the hearts of Tolkien fans worldwide. Though his role in the film adaptation of Lord of the Rings introduced him to a new audience, McKellen had a thriving career a lifetime before his visit to Middle Earth. He made his West End acting debut in 1964 in James Saunders's A Scent of Flowers, but it was in 1980 that he took Broadway by storm when he played Antonio Salieri in Peter Shaffer's Tony Award-winning play Amadeus....

With more than seventy years on the silver screen, Shirley MacLaine has, as she says, seen it all, done it all, been everywhere, and met everyone. Since making her Hollywood debut in 1955, her popularity has only grown as she’s amassed a stunning collection of awards and written multiple bestselling memoirs. Now, at ninety years old, MacLaine has more stories to tell and the pictures to bring them to life.

This comprehensive course is designed for actors aiming to master the diverse range of accents found across the United Kingdom and Ireland, offering an extensive foundation in both technical and cultural aspects of accent work, while maintaining accessibility for the novice learner. With an emphasis on authentic performance, the program provides step-by-step guidance on dialect production, using a wide variety of oral posture guidance, pronunciation exercises, and practical lexicon that actors can apply directly to their work.

Actor Stephen Tobolowsky has appeared in over 200 movies and television shows. He has played everyone from Ned Ryerson in Groundhog Day to Sandy Ryerson in Glee. He has amused thousands with his true stories on The Tobolowsky Files at Slashfilm.com and iTunes. Here he shares some homespun philosophy and more true stories that prove tales of sex, drugs, and rock and roll are often the most humiliating and almost always the most enjoyable.

Act: The Modern Actor’s Handbook is the result of 30 years of one of North America’s most renowned acting teachers teaching some of the world's most talented screen actors. This is a full tour through the concepts at the heart of Rotenberg’s techniques: states of being, primaries and secondaries, images that you elaborate up or distill down, modifiers, actions and beats, and more. Although his methods loosely draw on the great acting teachers like Hagen and Meisner back to Stanislavski, he teaches new techniques suited to the best of today’s screen actors.

The goddaughter of Igor Stravinsky and a graduate of Hollywood High, Eve Babitz posed in 1963, at age 20, playing chess with the French artist Marcel Duchamp. She was naked; he was not. The photograph made her an instant icon of art and sex. Babitz spent the rest of the decade rocking and rolling on the Sunset Strip, honing her notoriety. There were the album covers she designed: for Buffalo Springfield and the Byrds, to name but a few. There were the men she seduced: Jim Morrison, Ed Ruscha, Harrison Ford, to name but a very few.

From Broadway debuts to landmark productions. Score a front row seat to hear hundreds of stories about the most important stages in the world, seen through the eyes of the producers, actors, stage hands, writers, musicians, company managers, dressers, designers, directors, ushers, and door men who bring The Great White Way to life each night. You'll never look at Broadway the same way again.

With a foreword by Academy Award winner and theatre legend Horton Foote, this inspiring new book will strengthen in you the most essential and vital skills of great acting! It will lead you to a very personal way of working, as an actor who is absolutely authentic and tremendously simple—so rare in today's theatre.

A Long Time Ago in a Cutting Room Far, Far Away is a behind-the-scenes look at some of the most influential films of the last 50 years by Paul Hirsch, a film editor who worked on more than 40 features. Starting with his work on Carrie, Hirsch gives insight into the production process, touching upon casting, directing, cutting, and scoring. It’s a riveting look at the decisions that went into creating memorable and iconic scenes and offers fascinating portraits of filmmakers, stars, and composers.

Believe it or not, America's fascination with celebrity culture was thriving well before the days of TMZ, Perez Hilton, Charlie Sheen's breakdown, and allegations against Woody Allen. And the stars of yesteryear? They weren't always the saints that we make them out to be. Part biography, part cultural history, the stories contained in this book cover the stuff that films are made of: love, sex, drugs, illegitimate children, illicit affairs, and botched cover-ups.

The life and film genius of A Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream director Wes Craven. Wes Craven is one of the most successful and iconic horror movie directors in Hollywood. His masterful examination of the nightmarish nexus of dreams and reality helped spark a career that has spanned close to forty years. Then, with their mix of horror, sex, and humor, Craven's Scream movies helped revitalize the slasher film genre.

In a career that spans over seven decades, Roger Moore has been at the very heart of Hollywood. Of course, he's an actor who has starred in films that have made him famous the world over; but he is also a tremendous prankster, joker, and raconteur. Despite the fact that he is widely known as one of the nicest guys in the business, on and off the screen he has always been up for some fun.

The Sound of Music is a classic film cherished in the hearts of millions. It won five Oscars, including Best Picture, upon its release in 1965. This tribute to a Hollywood classic is sure to thrill everyone who's ever sung along to "My Favorite Things" at one of the many screenings that still take place today. Through interviews with the cast and crew, in-depth access to memorabilia and personal scrapbooks, and archival research at Fox Studios, author Julia Antopol Hirsch reveals the lively human story behind the making of the von Trapp family film.

In The World According to Tom Hanks, through deep research and interviews, Gavin Edwards will explore and celebrate how Tom Hanks lives his life, mirroring the way that he embodies optimism and integrity in his movie roles. This book will give insight into the actor by collecting the best stories about how he behaves in the world, providing a loving retrospective of his film career, and putting it all into the context of his all-American philosophy.

In this elegant and compelling biography, best-selling writer Shawn Levy writes of these many De Niros - the characters and the man - seeking to understand the evolution of an actor who once dove deeply into his roles as if to hide his inner nature, and who now seemingly avoids acting challenges, taking roles which make few apparent demands on his overwhelming talent.