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Actors' Lives: On and Off the American Stage
Interviews with twenty-one of America's finest actors about craft, career and the trials of making a life on stage. James Earl Jones, Olympia Dukakis, Josie de Guzman, Richard Thomas, Anthony Heald, Joan MacIntosh and Joe Morton.
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1993
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 1, 2018
Essential reading for actors and other creatives in the performing arts, as well as for fans and patrons of the theater. A moving and illuminating collection that covers the spectrum of what it means to be an American theater actor at the end of the 20th century.
November 29, 2022
The title says it all.
A paragraph from the preface:
The twenty-one outstanding artists in "Actors' Lives" was chosen, in collaboration with colleagues at Theatre Communications Group, from a list of four hundred excellent possibilities I compiled by scouring "Theatre World" from 1950 to the present, "Players Guide" and "Who's Who", collections of theatre programs at the Lincoln Center performing arts library, and the files of the Non-Traditional Casting Project. Whittling down the list was agonizing. Interviewing the chosen few were often as exhilarating as seeing their finest work onstage.
This is a surprising and informative book. I found that I knew many of the actors, but not by name. Again I was surprised to find such diverse backgrounds to what I thought were just one-time TV or movie actors. Reading about any one actor is well worth the price. Yet you will not be able to pass even those that you never heard of. I found a picture of Peter Gallager in "While You Were Sleeping" (1995) in the book even though he was not on the list.
The actors covered in this book are:
Frances Conroy, Clayton Corzatte, Olympia Dukakis, Frances Foster, Josie de Gunzman, Anthony Heald, Richard Jenkins, Cherry Jones, James Earl Jones, Randall Duk Kim, Jane Lind, Joan MacIntosh, John Mahoney, Paul McCrane, Isabell Monk, Joe Morton, Howie Seago, Freda Foh Shen, Josef Sommer, Richard Thomas, Jeff Weiss
A paragraph from the preface:
The twenty-one outstanding artists in "Actors' Lives" was chosen, in collaboration with colleagues at Theatre Communications Group, from a list of four hundred excellent possibilities I compiled by scouring "Theatre World" from 1950 to the present, "Players Guide" and "Who's Who", collections of theatre programs at the Lincoln Center performing arts library, and the files of the Non-Traditional Casting Project. Whittling down the list was agonizing. Interviewing the chosen few were often as exhilarating as seeing their finest work onstage.
This is a surprising and informative book. I found that I knew many of the actors, but not by name. Again I was surprised to find such diverse backgrounds to what I thought were just one-time TV or movie actors. Reading about any one actor is well worth the price. Yet you will not be able to pass even those that you never heard of. I found a picture of Peter Gallager in "While You Were Sleeping" (1995) in the book even though he was not on the list.
The actors covered in this book are:
Frances Conroy, Clayton Corzatte, Olympia Dukakis, Frances Foster, Josie de Gunzman, Anthony Heald, Richard Jenkins, Cherry Jones, James Earl Jones, Randall Duk Kim, Jane Lind, Joan MacIntosh, John Mahoney, Paul McCrane, Isabell Monk, Joe Morton, Howie Seago, Freda Foh Shen, Josef Sommer, Richard Thomas, Jeff Weiss
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews