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Errol Flynn: The True Story of Australia's Hollywood Icon
Errol Flynn was one of the first larger-than-life celebrities, an icon of the screen. This major biography uncovers the real story behind the well-cultivated Hollywood myths of this Australian-born actor.
Handsome and charismatic, Errol Flynn was one of the first great screen idols. He mesmerised millions around the world with his swordsmanship, swagger and smouldering sexuality. He portrayed an array of heroes in the Golden Age of Hollywood, and his life off screen was no less colourful.
This groundbreaking biography is the first complete account of Errol Flynn's life, from his unusual childhood in Tasmania and damaging family secrets, to his time in the brutal plantations of New Guinea, and his discovery by a Warner talent spotter. He quickly found fame in lead roles in blockbuster films like Captain Blood and The Adventures of Robin Hood. He was the man who had it all, who every man wanted to be, who every woman wanted.
This is a revealing and intimate portrait of Flynn, and gives serious attention to the many women in his life for the first time. Flynn's 1942 rape trial uncovered the sexual trafficking of underage girls in Hollywood on a grand scale. Tragically, he died aged only fifty, the result of a life lived to excess.
Handsome and charismatic, Errol Flynn was one of the first great screen idols. He mesmerised millions around the world with his swordsmanship, swagger and smouldering sexuality. He portrayed an array of heroes in the Golden Age of Hollywood, and his life off screen was no less colourful.
This groundbreaking biography is the first complete account of Errol Flynn's life, from his unusual childhood in Tasmania and damaging family secrets, to his time in the brutal plantations of New Guinea, and his discovery by a Warner talent spotter. He quickly found fame in lead roles in blockbuster films like Captain Blood and The Adventures of Robin Hood. He was the man who had it all, who every man wanted to be, who every woman wanted.
This is a revealing and intimate portrait of Flynn, and gives serious attention to the many women in his life for the first time. Flynn's 1942 rape trial uncovered the sexual trafficking of underage girls in Hollywood on a grand scale. Tragically, he died aged only fifty, the result of a life lived to excess.
- GenresBiography
368 pages, Paperback
Published March 30, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 3, 2026
My father had known a man - whose name unfortunately I don’t recall - who’d worked and sailed with Errol Flynn in Australia and New Guinea in the years before he was famous and he’d told my father some of the shocking and hair-raising experiences with Flynn that wouldn’t have been common knowledge at the time, including Flynn's relationships with native women and involvement in rough justice meted out to plantation workers.
As an impressionable teenager rather obsessed with movie stars, this prompted me to surreptitiously read “My Wicked, Wicked Ways”, the shocking memoir of Flynn, although it now appears that early edition had been edited or expurgated in order to avoid possible law suits and more recent editions have been restored to include Flynn’s real opinion of the dark underbelly of the Hollywood he knew, plus his own guilt at having embraced what it stood for.
This new biography reveals much more. The author has been able to draw on private letters of Flynn and his family members and other rare hitherto unpublished archival material.
At the present time when the Epstein scandal shows no sign of going away, the searing similarities to what was going on in Hollywood from the 1920s onwards can’t be avoided. Starry-eyed girls and young women were trafficked with the promises of glamorous careers in the movies in exchange for sexual favours. Nearly all of the studio bosses and many others in powerful positions were culpable, and of course leading virile actors like Flynn took full advantage of the system. Flynn became notorious for his penchant for under-age girls and even faced a trial for rape, acquitted by a jury top-heavy with middle-aged women who were probably fans. When he died aged only 50, his partner was still a teenager. He’d also been married three times, always disastrously.
Flynn’s family was dysfunctional going back several generations and is covered here in detail. His academic father was a womaniser and his mother also had a relationship while still married. She was reputedly descended from Edward Young, one of the infamous “Bounty” mutineers – an interesting fact considering Flynn’s first film role was that of Fletcher Christian, leader of the mutineers. There was nothing glamorous about those mutineers, they kidnapped and exploited both Tahitian women and men, and what took place on Pitcairn Island, then and since, doesn’t augur well for a long genetic line of moralists.
An immensely readable biography, although in some places there is extensive exposition on world events or history as background to Flynn’s antics that may not require reinforcement for some readers and easily can be skipped through.
This paragraph sums up Flynn’s life and legacy:
“Errol Flynn’s incredible life elicits competing emotions that run the full gamut from ardent admiration and curiosity to disgust. This journey through his life … reveals something greater than the life of one man … [his] story gives insight into the turbulent worlds he inhabited, and the great points of friction that made him both celebrated and contested, then and now. The questions about men’s power and sexual privileges, the entitlements and enablement of celebrities and the rich and powerful, the searing politics and enduring impacts of race and morality campaigns, the way men and women relate to each other, and the immense gulfs between what society permits for one sex and not the other, continue to convulse our lives.”
As an impressionable teenager rather obsessed with movie stars, this prompted me to surreptitiously read “My Wicked, Wicked Ways”, the shocking memoir of Flynn, although it now appears that early edition had been edited or expurgated in order to avoid possible law suits and more recent editions have been restored to include Flynn’s real opinion of the dark underbelly of the Hollywood he knew, plus his own guilt at having embraced what it stood for.
This new biography reveals much more. The author has been able to draw on private letters of Flynn and his family members and other rare hitherto unpublished archival material.
At the present time when the Epstein scandal shows no sign of going away, the searing similarities to what was going on in Hollywood from the 1920s onwards can’t be avoided. Starry-eyed girls and young women were trafficked with the promises of glamorous careers in the movies in exchange for sexual favours. Nearly all of the studio bosses and many others in powerful positions were culpable, and of course leading virile actors like Flynn took full advantage of the system. Flynn became notorious for his penchant for under-age girls and even faced a trial for rape, acquitted by a jury top-heavy with middle-aged women who were probably fans. When he died aged only 50, his partner was still a teenager. He’d also been married three times, always disastrously.
Flynn’s family was dysfunctional going back several generations and is covered here in detail. His academic father was a womaniser and his mother also had a relationship while still married. She was reputedly descended from Edward Young, one of the infamous “Bounty” mutineers – an interesting fact considering Flynn’s first film role was that of Fletcher Christian, leader of the mutineers. There was nothing glamorous about those mutineers, they kidnapped and exploited both Tahitian women and men, and what took place on Pitcairn Island, then and since, doesn’t augur well for a long genetic line of moralists.
An immensely readable biography, although in some places there is extensive exposition on world events or history as background to Flynn’s antics that may not require reinforcement for some readers and easily can be skipped through.
This paragraph sums up Flynn’s life and legacy:
“Errol Flynn’s incredible life elicits competing emotions that run the full gamut from ardent admiration and curiosity to disgust. This journey through his life … reveals something greater than the life of one man … [his] story gives insight into the turbulent worlds he inhabited, and the great points of friction that made him both celebrated and contested, then and now. The questions about men’s power and sexual privileges, the entitlements and enablement of celebrities and the rich and powerful, the searing politics and enduring impacts of race and morality campaigns, the way men and women relate to each other, and the immense gulfs between what society permits for one sex and not the other, continue to convulse our lives.”
May 14, 2026
A triumph. Patricia O’Brien takes a compelling subject and story and sets it in a much larger context of social and political change, Australian and US history and the financial and sexual mores of the movie business. It is rare to read a book which weaves popular writing and scholarship together so seamlessly. The book also speaks directly to our current era. Most importantly, it’s a great read.
April 5, 2026
A really enthralling book.
May 15, 2026
Enjoyable and interesting read, more about the social, economic, political, legal requirements of the period that Flynn lived through.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews