English Actors

What do you do when actors won't do what you tell them to? Remembering his own awkwardness and terror as a beginning director working with actors who always had their own ideas, director John Badham has a bookload of knowledge to pass along in this inspired and insightful must-listen for cinema fans as well as actors and directors at all levels of their craft.

She vigorously played the dumb-blonde stereotype in her movie roles, but there is nothing at all dumb about Marilyn Monroe. Born to a single mother who suffered from severe mental illness, the odds were stacked against the girl originally named Norma Jeane from the very beginning. She became a ward of the state and bounced around from foster home to foster home. The fact that she rose from such impoverished beginnings to become one of the top-billed acts in Hollywood speaks for itself.

Emmy-winning editor Jordan Goldman, ACE, takes you inside the cutting room and pulls back the curtain on how and why directors, showrunners, and editors decide whether your performance makes it to the screen. He explains the key things actors should do—and shouldn't do—to avoid getting cut out. Topics include what an editor does, how editors evaluate your work, why actors get cut, what you can control, and what you can't control.

When Conrad died, they uploaded him to New Albion, a digital afterlife system. It’s an adults only VRMMO game, created to indulge users' fantasies within a fully immersive classic fantasy setting. Now he stalks the forests of Tinshire as Vandal Lionheart, adventuring barbarian. Vandal is level one and on his first quest, when he picks up a side quest to rescue a prisoner.

So many talented actors have trouble preparing and making choices when it comes to tapping into the emotional life of a character. When your director says action, are you truly connected to your character and their world? Be Your Own Coach, by Amy Werba and Peter Meagher, is a manual that will allow you to prepare by yourself, for yourself, before an audition or on set.

The Authentic Actor: the Art and Business of Being Yourself illuminates for today’s actors the skills, strategies, and mental approach to navigating the intersection of art and commerce. It’s the culmination of Michael Laskin’s over forty years in the profession, and thousands of hours of classroom work and private coaching. Today’s “Authentic Actor” is someone who has successfully merged their highly developed talent with their fully examined identity. Defining, refining, and understanding your indelibility as an actor, your “blink-of-an-eye” factor, is key.

Your Worshipfulness is the story of how a teenage Carrie Fisher created Star Wars's greatest character, Princess Leia. Leia began as little more than a damsel in distress, albeit one with cinema's most iconic hairstyle. Over three films, Carrie made her a complicated character, beloved the world over. Then Darth Vader died, the Ewoks danced, the credits rolled, and that was that. Carrie now had the rest of her life to live, stuck in Leia's shadow.

Throughout the history of Hollywood, perhaps no actor has a reputation as unique as Johnny Depp. Depp began his career in a very traditional manner by being a teen heartthrob on shows like 21 Jump Street, but as he once admitted, "As a teenager I was so insecure. I was the type of guy that never fitted in because he never dared to choose. I was convinced I had absolutely no talent at all. For nothing. And that thought took away all my ambition too."

Get into learning Spanish with Gritty Spanish Basics, the perfect audio course for beginners. This engaging Spanish learning audiobook features 28 real-life conversations that will throw you right into practical Spanish, covering topics like small talk, introductions, directions, ordering at a restaurant, vacation plans, movies, doctor visits, hotel check-ins, music & and so much more! Each dialogue helps you build a solid foundation in Spanish through fun and relatable scenarios.

Allan Abbott ran the leading hearse, mortuary, and funeral services company in Hollywood and saw up close how celebrities really live and die. The Forrest Gump of the funeral industry, Abbott was everywhere celebrities died, from helping to prepare Marilyn Monroe's body for burial to standing next to Christopher Walken at Natalie Wood's funeral. This book tells the rags-to-shroud story of how a young man with a hearse became the funeral driver to the stars.

James Dean is known as the first rebel. He was a ‘50s-styled, leather-clad biker rebuking authority. With his black turtleneck and a penchant for bongo drums and poetry, he could also easily be a kind of forerunner to the beatniks. And with his unkempt, wild hair and far-reaching philosophies, he is often cited as a kind of early hippie, as well. But whatever category you put him in, James Dean was the embodiment of cool. He had a cool look, cool clothes, cool attitude, and a cool backstory that most know nothing about.

David's north star for navigating life's challenges has always been his positive outlook and his resilience. 'This time next year, we'll be millionaires' was what Derek Trotter once said. This certainly wasn't always the case for David, growing up in a working class family in London in the rubble of the Blitz. Before he was making us laugh on TV he was a jobbing electrician. But with every challenge he has faced in life, he's always looked forward, and has never give in.

Told with humor and flair, this is the autobiography of one transsexual's wild ride from boyhood as Alfred Brevard ("Buddy") Crenshaw in rural Tennessee to voluptuous female entertainer in Hollywood. Aleshia Brevard, as she is now known, underwent transitional surgery in Los Angeles in 1962, one of the first such operations in the United States. (The famous sexual surgery pioneer Harry Benjamin himself broke the news to Brevard's parents.)

In the distant future, humanity wages war on many fronts. In the core systems resides a deity for all to follow—Eden. The youthful monarch is symbolic, serving annual terms to keep humanity blessed under her salvation.

Young, cocksure, handsome and absurdly talented, Australian actor Heath Ledger shot to prominence with his first Hollywood film "10 Things I Hate About You": and a star was born. With huge charisma and smouldering looks lighting up the screen in a series of subsequent films, Heath was soon established as Hollywood A-list, dating a series of beauties such as Heather Graham and Naomi Watts, and living every young man's dream.

The work of Mike Nichols pervades American cultural consciousness - from The Graduate and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? to Angels in America, The Birdcage, Working Girl, and Primary Colors, not to mention his string of hit plays, including Barefoot in the Park and The Odd Couple. Over a career that spanned half a century, Mike Nichols changed Hollywood, Broadway, and comedy forever. Here, for the first time, Ash Carter and Sam Kashner offer an intimate look behind the scenes of Nichols' life.

John Wayne graced the screen as a cowboy, an all-around rugged hero of the plains. With his “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” determination and raw sense of individualism, in many ways he came to symbolize everything that Americans held dear. His characters - tough as nails - were always idealistic adventurers seeking to right the wrongs of the world. But who was John Wayne? Born Marion Morrison, most don’t even know his real name. In this book, we will cut through all the hype and get to the real man behind the legend of John Wayne.

Convicted for a murder he did not commit, Talum d'Argento du'Pleisse is exiled to the World Below, the endless labyrinth of monster-filled catacombs that lies beneath the human kingdoms. Talum finds himself thrown into the death pits of the dark elves, sentenced to fight till he dies. If he wants to return to the surface and get revenge on the woman who set him up, he will need to train, fight, and survive. He has three weeks to prepare.

An invaluable reference for anyone who is a working actor, or wants to be. Learn how to make it in the day-to-day business of acting and stay sane and focused while attempting to merge art and commerce. This audiobook covers everything the author wishes someone had told him about how casting decisions are made, what rejection really means, how to behave on a set, the two factors the business is built on, and much more. Markus Flanagan offers encouraging, highly useful pointers on such vital matters as: How do you combat getting typed?

There has never been a show business book quite like The Show Won't Go On, the first comprehensive study of a bizarre phenomenon: performers who died onstage. From the comedy magician who dropped dead on live television to the amateur thespian who expired during a play called The Art of Murder, the book is a celebration of lives both famous and obscure, as well as a dramatic and accurate recounting of events leading to the moments they died "doing what they loved."