From Publishers Weekly
British actress Whitelaw, born in Coventry in 1932, tells harrowing stories of surviving the Nazi blitz. In hopes of finding a cure for her stuttering, she became a radio actress and went on to join Joan Littlewood's acting group, eventually ending up working for Sir Laurence Olivier at the National Theatre. This outspoken, at times sentimental and heartrending memoir goes on to discuss the great names of the British acting community from the 1950s through the '90s?from Alfred Hitchcock to Albert Finney to Kenneth Tynan?but concentrates on Whitelaw's work with Irish writer Samuel Beckett. Starting with Play in 1963, she would work with Beckett until his death in 1989. In later years she would also star in Beckett's Not I, Footfalls, Happy Days and Rockaby, which the playwright wrote especially for her. She also bares her soul about her personal life: her two marriages, the birth of her son and the trauma of almost losing him to meningitis. Because she worked so closely with Beckett, who also directed her in several of his plays, this is an invaluable guide for the Beckett actor or director.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Best known in the U.S. for her work in Samuel Beckett's enigmatic later short plays (many of them written expressly for her), Whitelaw had a long and varied career before she became Beckett's favorite English-speaking actress. Working with Britain's leading theatrical lights--Laurence Olivier, Albert Finney, John Osborne, Harold Pinter, etc.--Whitelaw appeared in plays, films, and BBC-TV shows. She recounts her remarkable, busy life in a literate, readable, surprisingly gossip-free autobiography that starts with her traumatic childhood during the blitz in the 1940s and ends in the early 1990s with her "new" postacting life as a college lecturer on Beckett. Whitelaw is most vivid when she describes her most difficult moments--the wartime bombings, her father's early death, her son's battle with meningitis, and the many trials she endured while making Beckett's spare, demanding plays live and breath. Meanwhile, her lighter, less focused moments--for example, her remarks in four "intermissions" on noteworthy writers, directors, and actors she has known--will greatly amuse film and theater aficionados. Jack Helbig
