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Showing 1 - 20 of 92 items
Stormy weather: the life of Lena Horne
By James Gavin. 2009
Biography of African American singer/actress Lena Horne, born in 1917 Brooklyn, who first performed at Harlem's Cotton Club at age…
sixteen. Interprets Horne's multiracial family background in the pre-civil rights era as the reason for emotional conflicts in both her personal and professional lives. Some strong language and some descriptions of sex. c2009.Like a lampshade in a whorehouse: my life in comedy
By Richard Buskin, Phyllis Diller. 2006
Born to elderly parents in Lima, Ohio, in 1917, Phyllis Ada Driver was blessed with neither beauty nor wealth, and…
then married a selfish ne'er-do-well (who became the "Fang" in her comic monologues) at 20 and had five children. Nearly 40 when she began her performing career, Diller turned a knack for relentless self-deprecation into a nightclub act. Eventually shedding her dud husband, Diller became a superstar - and the first one to go public about her plastic surgery. Strong language. Some descriptions of sex. Some descriptions of violence. 2006.Here we go again: my life in television
By Betty White. 2010
Betty White first appeared on television in 1949 and has starred on shows such as The Mary Tyler Moore Show…
and The Golden Girls. This autobiography is a behind-the-scenes look at Betty's career from her start on radio to her first show, Hollywood on Television, to several iterations of The Betty White Show and much more. Packed with anecdotes about famous personalities and friendships, stories of Betty's off-screen life, and the comedienne's trademark humour. 1995.Heart matters
By Adrienne Clarkson. 2006
Adrienne Clarkson's family escaped from Japanese-occupied Hong Kong in 1942, arriving in Ottawa. After a long CBC career, she returned…
in 1999 to Ottawa to become Canada's twenty-sixth and sometimes controversial Governor General. She reflects on her public and private life, including her beautiful but troubled mother, the death of an infant, and the estrangement from her two daughters and their later reunion. 2006.Always looking up: the adventures of an incurable optimist
By Michael J Fox. 2009
In this follow-up to "Lucky Man" (DC24587), movie and television star Fox discusses his work, politics, faith, and family. An…
advocate for stem-cell research, Fox describes the impact his Parkinson's disease has had on his life. Strong language. Bestseller. 2009.A funny thing happened on the way to the future: twists and turns and lessons learned
By Michael J Fox. 2010
Michael J. Fox abandoned high school to pursue an acting career, but here he inspires graduates to recognize opportunities, maximize…
their abilities, and roll with the punches. He draws on his own life experiences to make a case that real learning happens when "life goes skidding sideways." Fox offers up a comically skewed take on how, in his own way, he fulfilled the requirements of a college syllabus. 2010.This is just my face: try not to stare
By Gabourey Sidibe. 2017
Gabourey Sidibe skyrocketed to fame in 2009 when she played the leading role in the movie Precious. With full-throttle honesty,…
Sidibe paints her Bed-Stuy/Harlem family life with a polygamous father and a gifted mother who supports her two children by singing in the subway. Sidibe tells the inspiring story of her first job as a phone sex “talker.” And she shares her unconventional (of course!) rise to fame as a movie star, alongside “a superstar cast of rich people who lived in mansions and had their own private islands and amazing careers while I lived in my mom's apartment.” 2017.So, anyway
By John Cleese. 2014
The story of how a tall, shy youth from Weston-super-Mare went on to become a self-confessed legend. En route, John…
Cleese describes his nerve-racking first public appearance, at St Peter's Preparatory School at the age of eight and five-sixths; his endlessly peripatetic home life with parents who seemed incapable of staying in any house for longer than six months; his first experiences in the world of work as a teacher who knew nothing about the subjects he was expected to teach; his hamster-owning days at Cambridge; and his first encounter with the man who would be his writing partner for over two decades, Graham Chapman. And so on to his dizzying ascent via scriptwriting for Peter Sellers, David Frost, Marty Feldman and others to the heights of Monty Python. 2014.Last man standing: tales from Tinseltown
By Roger Moore, Gareth Owen. 2014
In this collection of true stories from his stellar career, Roger lifts the lid on the movie business. It features…
outrageous tales from his own life as well as those told to him by a host of stars. Wonderfully entertaining and laugh-out-loud funny, this selection of tales from the world of the movies is vintage Moore at his very best. 2014.Robin: The Definitive Biography Of Robin Williams
By Dave Itzkoff. 2018
From his rapid-fire stand-up comedy riffs to his breakout role in Mork & Mindy and his powerful Academy Award-winning performance…
in Good Will Hunting, Robin Williams was an innovative actor and comedian. He often came across as a man possessed, holding forth on culture, politics, and personal revelation with mercurial, tongue-twisting intensity as he inhabited and shed one character after another. In his comedy and in celebrated films like Dead Poets Society, Good Morning, Vietnam, The Fisher King, Aladdin, and Mrs. Doubtfire, Williams showcased his gift for improvisation, bringing his characters to life and using humor to seek deeper truths. Culture reporter Dave Itzkoff shows how Williams also struggled mightily with addiction and depression and with a debilitating condition at the end of his life that affected him in ways his fans never knew. Drawing on more than a hundred original interviews with family, friends, and colleagues, as well as extensive archival research, Itzkoff provides a portrait of a performer whose work touched so many of our lives. 2018.This will only hurt a little
By Busy Philipps. 2018
From the time she was two and "aced out in her nudes" to explore the neighborhood (as her mom famously…
described her toddler jailbreak), Busy Philipps has always been headstrong, defiant, and determined not to miss out on all the fun. These qualities led her to leave Scottsdale, Arizona, at the age of nineteen to pursue her passion for acting in Hollywood. But chasing her dreams wasn't always easy and sometimes hurt more than a little. In this candid memoir, Busy opens up about chafing against a sexist system rife with on-set bullying and body shaming, being there when friends face shattering loss, enduring devastating personal and professional betrayals from those she loved best, and struggling with postpartum anxiety and the challenges of motherhood. But Busy also brings to the page her sly sense of humor and the unshakeable sense that disappointment shouldn't stand in her way -- even when she's knocked down both figuratively and literally (from a knee injury at her seventh-grade dance to a violent encounter on the set of Freaks and Geeks). The rough patches in her life are tempered by times of hilarity and joy: leveraging a flawless impression of Cher from Clueless into her first paid acting gig, helping reinvent a genre with cult classic Freaks and Geeks, becoming fast friends with Dawson's Creek castmate Michelle Williams, staging her own surprise wedding, conquering natural childbirth with the help of a Mad Men-themed hallucination, and more. 2018.The last black unicorn
By Tiffany Haddish. 2017
Stand-up comedian and actress Tiffany Haddish grew up in one of the poorest parts of South Central Los Angeles. Her…
mother wound up with a debilitating brain injury after surviving a car accident. Tiffany never fit in anywhere: not in the households she rotated through in the foster care system, and certainly not the nearly all white high school she had to ride the bus an hour to attend. As an illiterate ninth grader, Tiffany did everything she could to survive. After a multitude of jobs, she finally realized that she had talent in an area she never would have suspected: comedy. Tiffany faced the 'routine' hindrances of climbing the entertainment business ladder, but had the added obstacles of sex, race, and class in her way. But she got there. She's humble, grateful, down to earth, and funny as hell. She still cleans the toilet the way she was shown by a foster mom who worked as a maid, and she still rolls her joints the way one of her foster dads taught her. This memoir describes the struggles of a woman who was able to achieve her dreams by reveling in her pain and awkwardness, showing the world who she really is, and inspiring others through the power of laughter. Bestseller. 2017.I can't make this up: life lessons
By Neil Strauss, Kevin Hart. 2017
Comedian and Hollywood box office star Kevin Hart's memoir on survival, success, and the importance of believing in yourself. It…
begins in North Philadelphia. He was born an accident, unwanted by his parents. His father was a drug addict who was in and out of jail. His brother was a crack dealer and petty thief. And his mother was overwhelmingly strict, beating him with belts, frying pans, and his own toys. Hart takes the reader on a journey through what his life was, what it is today, and how he’s overcome each challenge to become the man he is today. Bestseller. 2017.Above the line: my "Wild oats" adventure
By Shirley MacLaine. 2016
Her agent told her not to get on the plane. The male leads weren’t even cast. The financing was shaky…
at best. The script had been re-written countless times. And yet something about ‘Wild Oats’ lured Shirley MacLaine to the film’s location shoot in the Canary Islands - and straight to the centre of a thrilling adventure. Scholars have long theorized that Spain’s Canary Islands are the remnants of the lost continent of Atlantis. As the movie set descends into pandemonium, Shirley finds corollaries between the island’s cataclysmic fate and our own dangerous trajectory. Can we learn the lessons the citizens of Atlantis failed to comprehend? 2016.Scrappy little nobody
By Anna Kendrick. 2016
In this collection of autobiographical essays, the Academy Award-nominated actress and star of Up in the Air recounts memorable milestones…
from her New England upbringing to the blockbuster films that have made her one of Hollywood's most popular actresses. She invites readers inside her brain, recounting the absurdities she's experienced on her way to and from the heart of pop culture. From her double life as a middle-school student who also starred on Broadway to her rise dazzling on the stage and screen, we enter her sharp and sweet, funny and serious (well, not that serious) world. Bestseller. 2016.The life and loves of a he devil
By Graham Norton. 2014
Graham Norton has been entertaining audiences and having fun with some of the world's biggest stars for nearly 20 years.…
He is loved across the nation for his delight in the peculiar and for his ability to find humour and a common ground in all that life brings. This book is his memoir on the theme of love, telling his story from his Irish childhood to the present day, describing just what and who he loved - and sometimes lost - as a young boy, and his new loves and obsessions - big and small - as he's grown older. 2014.Yes please
By Amy Poehler. 2014
A collection of stories, thoughts, ideas, lists, and haiku from one of America’s most beloved entertainers, offers Poehler’s thoughts on…
everything from her “too safe” childhood outside of Boston to her early days in New York City, her ideas about Hollywood and “the biz,” the demon that looks back at all of us in the mirror, and her joy at being told she has a “face for wigs.” Bestseller. 2014.Leonard: my fifty-year friendship with a remarkable man
By William Shatner, David Fisher. 2016
Shatner and Nimoy first met as actors on the set of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Little did they know that…
their next roles, in a new science-fiction television series, would shape their lives in ways no one could have anticipated. In 79 television episodes and six feature films, they grew to know each other more than most friends could ever imagine. In this powerfully emotional book, Shatner tells the story of a man who was his friend for over 50 years, recounting anecdotes and untold stories of their lives on and off set, as well as gathering stories from Nimoy's close friends and family. Bestseller. 2016.Sick in the head: conversations about life and comedy
By Judd Apatow. 2015
Before becoming one of the most successful filmmakers in Hollywood, Judd Apatow was the original comedy nerd. At 16, he…
was hosting a show for his local high school radio station — a show that consisted of Q&As with his comedy heroes, from Garry Shandling to Jerry Seinfeld. They talked about their careers, the science of a good joke, and their dreams of future glory. Thirty years later, Apatow is still that same comedy nerd—and he’s still interviewing funny people about why they do what they do. Here are 30 years' worth of Apatow’s most memorable and revealing conversations in one hilarious, wide-ranging, and incredibly candid collection that spans not only his career but his entire adult life. 2015.Why not me?
By Mindy Kaling. 2015
Kaling shares her ongoing journey to find contentment and excitement in her adult life, whether it’s falling in love at…
work, seeking new friendships in lonely places, attempting to be the first person in history to lose weight without any behaviour modification whatsoever, or believing that you have a place in Hollywood when you’re constantly reminded that no one looks like you. Bestseller. 2015.