SUNSHINE GIRL

The veteran actor delivers the intriguing tale of her unusual childhood and successful career.

This is no superficial tell-all or exercise in name-dropping. Rather, just like two recent standout celebrity memoirs—Gabriel Byrne’s Walking With Ghosts and Cecily Tyson’s Just As I Am—this book is more about the strength of the storytelling than the star power of the author. Margulies doesn’t dwell on her work on ER or discuss the rumored feud with Archie Punjabi, her co-star on The Good Wife. Instead, the author focuses on her childhood and how shuttling between the homes of her divorced parents across Europe and America influenced her life and acting career. “I was always trying to be another person as a child,” writes Margulies, adding that her mother called her “Sunshine Girl” because she was “a naturally happy child…joyful and easygoing” and felt the need to lift everyone’s spirits in whatever way possible. However, while she was deeply connected to the emotions of her parents, she found herself ignoring her own. “I had this ongoing recording playing in my brain that I wasn’t a quitter, I was a survivor,” she writes. “I was strong, dependable.” It’s a pattern that repeated in her adult relationships, following her into stardom on ER. Margulies does reveal her reasons behind leaving the show after six seasons, turning down $27 million to extend her contract two years, and she discusses why the major relationships of her life failed before she met her husband. What the author shares and doesn’t is deliberate, all offered to advance the fascinating story she wants to tell. It’s the mark of a talented storyteller and a sign she can have another creative future if she wants it.

Margulies’ unflinching quest to explain her life makes her well-crafted memoir compelling whether you know her roles or not.