With just the right smattering of poison in his pen, this Swazi/British actor recounts the daily trials and tribulations of making movies. Grant’s moderately successful acting career is largely the result of one film, Withnail and I, a 1986 British cult film that garnered him substantial critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic. Until this role came along, Grant was wracked upon the wheel of increasingly despairing auditions; six months later, he was jetting off to Hollywood and taking meetings. His pleasant but slightly off-kilter looks brought few offers to play the leading man, but lots of juicy “character” roles as directors from Coppola to Altman to Scorsese cast him in small but telling parts. Grant’s recounting of making the egregiously bad Hudson Hawk, the madness of endless delays, rudderless direction, and cost overruns, are some of the most entertaining and appalling parts of this book. Grant is secure enough to reveal at length the insecurities and ego drubbings and monomania of the actor’s life. As both a fan and a player, he is close enough to see all the boggling, sordid workings of the star machine, but not quite caught in its gears. Each director’s style may vary (and Grant is particularly insightful on directing actors), but certain things remain the same: the long delays, punctuated by intense moments of activity, the close camaraderie that dissipates once filming is over, the struggle to find the truth of a character. In the service of their egos, actors often try to increase their lines, expand their roles, and if this book has a fault, it is along these lines—it is just a little too long. But you—d be hard pressed to find an American actor who could deliver such a refreshing combination of comedy, confession, and coruscation. (14 b&w photos)
Pub Date: June 12, 1998
ISBN: 0-87951-828-6
Page Count: 337
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered...
The incredible true story of three Jewish women who survived the Holocaust.
Priska, Rachel, and Anka were married Jewish women in their early 20s when the Nazis took control of Europe. Like millions of other Jews, they were forced to give up their normal lives, all of their belongings, and their homes. Shuttled into ghettos and then off to one of the most notorious camps, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, they suffered through the Nazis’ increasing atrocities. But these three women all held a secret: they were pregnant. They were moved from Auschwitz and ended up in Mauthausen, another notorious death camp. With facing the most horrible conditions imaginable, all three gave birth right before the Allies accepted Germany’s surrender. In this meticulously detailed account, Holden (Haatchi & Little B: The Inspiring True Story of One Boy and His Dog, 2014, etc.) compiles an enormous amount of information from interviews, letters, historical records, and personal visits to the sites where this story unfolded. The graphic history places readers in the moment and provides a sense of the enduring power of love that Priska, Rachel, and Anka had for their unborn children and for the husbands they so desperately hoped to see after the war. Even though it occurred more than 70 years ago, the story’s truth is so chillingly portrayed that it seems as if it could have happened recently. These three women and their infants survived in the face of death, and, Holden writes, “their babies went on to have babies of their own and create a second and then a third generation, all of whom continue to live their lives in defiance of Hitler’s plan to erase them from history and from memory.”
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered through at the hands of the Nazis.Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-237025-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2015
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
