English Actors

Betty Grable: The Reluctant Movie Queen is a fascinating and intimate account of the famous star who was for many years the highest-paid woman in America and a favorite pin-up all over the world.

Hilarious, charming, and self-effacing, meet Edmund Pegge, one of Australia's most prolific supporting actors. Traveling between England and Australia and working on stage, in film and on television for over 50 years, Ed Pegge knows all the tricks and all the trials of a working actor's life. He regales us with tales of the good times that intersperse the actor's lean spells.

Three years before David Bowie died, he shared a list of 100 books that changed his life. His choices span fiction and nonfiction, literary and irreverent, and include timeless classics alongside eyebrow-raising obscurities. In 100 short essays, music journalist John O'Connell studies each book on Bowie's list and contextualizes it in the artist's life and work. Heartfelt, analytical, and totally original, Bowie's Bookshelf is one part epic reading guide and one part biography of a music legend.

Sanjeev Kumar was the antithesis of the typical Bollywood hero doing romance and action. Not one to crave glamorous roles, he was more interested in versatility. From his mature roles in films like Mausam and Aandhi to his comic timing in Angoor or the angst of person with disabilities in Koshish-he was truly a thinking man's actor. His expressive face, inflections and pauses, natural ease for lip-syncing, all of it made him the complete package.

When Marlene Dietrich first became a household name in the United States, she introduced a new standard for female sexuality onscreen. Her performance in The Blue Angel (1930) stands not only as one of the most glamorous roles ever played but also as one of the frankest depictions of the femme fatale ever captured on screen. Moreover the film essentially set the tone for the image that Marlene Dietrich would cultivate over her career: unabashedly sexual but wrapped in an air of mystery.

The life of Joan Crawford is one of the most famous Hollywood rags-to-riches tales. While it is common to think of Hollywood as a land offering great opportunity to hardworking actresses, the Horatio Alger myth rarely applies in reality, but it applied almost perfectly to Joan Crawford. Joan Crawford's life and career also shed light on the treatment of women in pop culture and in cinema during the early 20th century. Her career was not only limited to film acting, as she acted in musical revues and was previously an unabashed flapper during the Roaring Twenties.

Ambrose Palmer, an aspiring actor, journeys through the circles of hell of a brutal industry. We follow him, his lovers, and a small clan of novice performers as they weather the storms of the acting profession. But behind the sex and hilarity lurks the desperation of Thatcher’s England.

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.

Encouraged by her mother, Sophie Neville kept a diary about her time filming on location in the lakes and mountains of Cumbria. Bouncy and effervescent, extracts from her childhood diary are interspersed among her memories of the cast and crew, offering a child's eye view of the making of the film from development to premiere—and the aftermath.

Voice Over Man is a fascinating insight into the life of one of the world’s most prolific voiceover artists. It’s a frank and very personal account of his career. Not in the full glare of the spotlight, but in the dark spaces behind the scenes that the public never get to see. From barking like a dog on pet food commercials to his universally recognised work on the world’s biggest television shows - The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent together with countless video games and live events; he recounts the highs and lows of his deeply unconventional career.

A first-hand account of how Chris DeRose investigated, and finally busted, some of the most heartless and corrupt federally licensed pet-theft rings in the nation. Facts about our federal and local governments' involvement in the multi-million dollar pet-theft industry. Frontline intelligence to what actually occurs in animal laboratories.

Lisa Jakub had what she was supposed to want: She was a working actor in Los Angeles. She had more than 40 movies and TV shows to her name. She had been in blockbusters like Mrs. Doubtfire and Independence Day. She walked the red carpet and lived in the house she had bought when she was 15. But something was missing. Passion. Purpose. Happiness. In this funny and insightful book, Lisa chronicles the adventures of growing up in the film industry and her difficult decision to leave behind the only life she had ever known.

From its opening moments, Mike Farrell’s memoir reveals the distinctive voice of a man for whom life is an ongoing odyssey of self-discovery, personal commitment, and uncompromising social engagement. The world-renowned actor offers inspirational and often humorous reflections on his path to fame and progressive activism in this book, which became a Los Angeles Times best seller and drew tremendous national media attention.

In 1994 the American Film Institute gave a Lifetime Achievement Award to Jack Nicholson, who became one of the youngest actors ever to receive the award. Such tributes typically come as a capstone to a star's career, not when the actor is still in his 50s. In fact Nicholson would go on to win the Oscar for Best Actor just a few years after receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award as a result of As Good As It Gets (1997), and he would earn another Academy Award nomination for About Schmidt (2002).

Paul Newman, the Oscar-winning actor with the legendary blue eyes, achieved superstar status by playing charismatic renegades, broken heroes, and winsome antiheroes in such revered films as The Hustler, Cool Hand Luke, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Verdict, The Color of Money, and Nobody’s Fool. But Newman was also an oddity in Hollywood: the rare box-office titan who cared about the craft of acting, the sexy leading man known for the staying power of his marriage, and the humble celebrity who made philanthropy his calling card long before it was cool.

A remarkably candid biography of the remarkably candid - and brilliant - Carrie Fisher. Sourced by friends, colleagues, and witnesses to all stages of Fisher’s life, Carrie Fisher: A Life on the Edge is an empathic and even-handed portrayal of a woman who - as Princess Leia, but mostly as herself - was a feminist heroine, one who died at a time when we need her blazing, healing honesty more than ever.

Stuart Leandro knows he's washed up, both on the big screen and in his marriage. Then, when things take an even bigger turn for the worse one night, he winds up blind drunk and lost in a foreign city. Thankfully, someone's there to rescue him before his face ends up plastered all over the tabloids.

He was a pioneering film director who had 518 films to his credit. His work spanned the silent and sound eras. Most of his films were completed in a span of 15 years. But today he is known only for one of his films, one considered by historians to be a landmark in cinema as well as the most controversial ever made. He could not escape the controversy of this one film before he died in relative obscurity, his contributions to the motion picture industry forever marred.

Part backstage tour, part travelogue, part social commentary, Letters from Backstage recounts Michael Kostroff’s adventures touring with the road companies of The Producers and Les Miserables. Trekking through more than 20 American cities large and small, here is the story of an actor’s dream come true and the bizarre things that happened along the way—not to mention personal anecdotes about celebrities, including Mel Brooks, Susan Stroman, Jason Alexander, and Martin Short!

My name is Mickey Rowe. I am an actor, a theatre director, a father, and a husband. I am also a man with autism. You think those things don’t go together? Let me show you that they do.