English Actors

Ben Hogan was the hero no one knew. No one knew what drove him to practice until his hands bled. No one knew what private demons built the high walls that surrounded him. No one was even sure how he hit a golf ball with such godlike precision. He built a legend and a mystique that captivates golfers still.

Joan Crawford's remarkable forty-five-year motion picture career is one of the industry's longest. Signing her first contract in 1925, she was crowned an MGM star four years later and by the mid-1930s was the most popular actress in America. In the early 1940s, Crawford's risky decision to move to Warner Bros. was rewarded with an Oscar for Mildred Pierce. This triumph launched a series of film noir classics. She teamed with rival Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, proving that Crawford, whose career had begun by defining big-screen glamor, had matured into a dramatic actress.

Ever wonder why so many B actors wind up as A-grade politicians? Or how the casting couch worked? Acclaimed author Kathleen Sharp traces the influence of show business through the lives of its first power couple. Edie and Lew Wasserman built the world’s largest talent agency, MCA, created the multibillion-dollar Universal Studios, and helped shape Washington, DC.

Best known for his horror/sci-fi/fantasy films including Phantasm, The Beastmaster, Bubba Ho-tep, and John Dies at the End, now Don Coscarelli’s taking you on a white-knuckle ride through the rough and tumble world of indie film. This memoir fits an entire film school education into a single audiobook. It’s loaded with behind-the-scenes stories and will prove indispensable for fans of Coscarelli’s movies, aspiring filmmakers, and anyone who loves a story of an underdog who prevails while not betraying what he believes.

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.

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.

The Tony Award-nominated writer of The Tale of the Allergist's Wife and the long-running hit Off-Broadway play Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, and a Sundance Festival award winner Charles Busch has created a unique place in the entertainment world as a playwright, LGBT icon, drag actor, director, and cabaret performer, with his extraordinary gift for both connecting with and channeling the leading ladies of show business.

Writing with an exuberant love of language and detail, Anjelica Huston shares her enchanted childhood in Ireland, her teen years in London, and her coming of age as a model and nascent actress in New York.

Melody Thomas Scott admits she is nothing like her Young and the Restless role, who has seen it all in her 40-year tenure on America's highest-rated daytime serial. But the high drama, angst, and catastrophes aren't confined to her character's plotlines. In this captivating memoir, Melody reveals behind-the-scenes tales of her own riveting journey to stardom.

Beloved actor and environmental activist Ed Begley Jr. shares hilarious and poignant stories of his improbable life, focusing on his relationship with his legendary father, adventures with Hollywood icons, the origins of his environmental activism, addiction and recovery, and his lifelong search for wisdom and common ground.

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.

Richard E. Grant’s life changed almost overnight when he was cast as the lead in Withnail & I in 1986. He kept a diary of the experience, the bestselling With Nails, and now it is published for the first time in audio, read by the author. Funny and revealing, told with trademark candour, join Richard E. Grant on the shoot of a lifetime.

Before Constance Wu, Sandra Oh, Awkwafina, or Lucy Liu, there was Anna May Wong. In her time, she was a legendary beauty, witty conversationalist, and fashion icon. Plucked from her family’s laundry business in Los Angeles, Anna May Wong rose to stardom in Douglas Fairbanks’s blockbuster The Thief of Bagdad. Fans and the press clamored to see more of this unlikely actress, but when Hollywood repeatedly cast her in stereotypical roles, she headed abroad in protest. Not Your China Doll showcases the vibrant, radical life of a groundbreaking artist.

While struggling to find success as an actor and pay the bills, something accidentally happened to Jeff Hiller: he aged. And while it’s one thing to get older and rest on the laurels of success from the blood, sweat, and tears of your youth, it’s quite another to be old and have no laurels. At forty, stuck in a temp job making spreadsheets, the dream of becoming a star seemed out of reach. But after twenty-five years of guest roles on TV and performing improv in a grocery store basement, he finally struck gold with a breakout role on HBO’s Somebody Somewhere, playing Joel.

In the summer of 1974, a 14-year-old girl in Dolton, Illinois, had a dream - a dream to become an actress. But it was a long way from the South Side of Chicago to Hollywood, and it didn’t help that she’d recently dropped out of the school play, The Ugly Duckling, or that the Hollywood casting directors she wrote to replied that "professional training was a requirement". But the funny thing is, it all came true....

I fell in love with Carter James Callahan’s smart-mouthed smirk long before it was labeled “The Sexiest Smile in Hollywood.” I also fell for his broad, muscular shoulders, his impossibly blue eyes, his… Nope! Not going there anymore. Because while Carter may frequent my dreams every night, I will only ever frequent his friend zone, which is why I’m on an official mission to rid myself of my pesky feelings for him. I’m gonna put myself out there, start dating, and stop hopelessly crushing on my best friend. Deep down, I know this is for the best.

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.

Stories I Must Tell: The Emotional Life of an Actor is the best-selling memoir of an international star whose stories are set in Hollywood, Bollywood, and Europe. A deeply human story of an actor's making, breaking and remaking as a man. Of blazing trails internationally, heartfelt relationships with extraordinary women, breathtaking triumphs and gut-wrenching setbacks. A candid autobiography that holds nothing back in love or storytelling. The amazing journey actor of an across three continents, told in his legendary voice.

Virtually all famous actors are regaled by the public, but even still, Fred Astaire occupies a privileged position in American pop culture. The specific films in which Astaire acted may not be especially famous in their own right - most people likely cannot recall the title of Top Hat (1935), his most decorated film - but Astaire's dancing prowess invariably creates a lasting impact on viewers.

With brutal honesty and his trademark take-no-prisoners humor, Tracy tells the story of his rise to fame, with all its highs and its many lows - from the very public battles with alcohol and diabetes that threatened both his career and his life to the private and poignant end of his 20-year marriage. In his singularly warped and brilliant way, he muses on family, love, sex, race, politics, ambition, and what it takes to bring the funny.