Looking for Gatsby [Hardcover]

Faye Dunaway (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 10, 1995

One of Hollywood's most glamorous and mysterious stars offers a no-holds-barred look at her life, chronicling her rise from poverty to stunning success and candidly discussing her love life and her career. 125,000 first printing. Major ad/promo. Tour.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Actress Faye Dunaway had a peripatetic childhood, bounced from Florida's flatlands to Germany, Texas, Utah and back to Florida with a philandering army sergeant father and a mother who instilled in her a desire to be the best. Born Dorothy Faye, the struggling Broadway actress became a film star overnight in the mid-1960s. Through two marriages?to J. Geils Band lead singer Peter Wolf, then to her manager, film producer Terry O'Neill?and through love affairs with actor Marcello Mastroianni, director Jerry Schatzberg and others, Dunaway struggled to balance her career and personal life and to overcome emotional patterns set during her rootless girlhood, which taught her "not to care too deeply." "In many ways," she writes, her father, John MacDowell Dunaway, "was my Gatsby.... It's my love that transforms him.... They say when Gatsby smiles at you, you feel as if he believes in you just as you would like to believe in yourself." For all its moments of disarming candor, this star-studded autobiography (written with New York Times Los Angeles correspondent Sharkey) remains a self-conscious, guarded performance. Photos. First serial to Cosmopolitan; author tour.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Dunaway sheds her cool public persona in this candid autobiography. Her enduring professonal career on stage, in film, and on TV mirrors fragments of the histories of Broadway and Hollywood. From her bleak childhood of poverty in the Florida Panhandle to stardom, one realizes why she succeeds while playing characters who broke new ground and women who control their own destinies in Bonnie and Clyde, Barfly, Network, Cold Sassy Tree, and more. Beneath her sophistication, intelligence, and aloofness, there is a perfectionist with fear and vulnerability. Her failed marriages and broken relationships to artistic, unavailable men stem from her early, unstable military family life with an unfaithful, absentee father. She speaks warmly of her mentor, Bill Alfred, and such costars as Marlon Brando and Warren Beatty, but spares nothing in her deep resentment toward Otto Preminger, Roman Polanski, and Bette Davis. At age 55, she finds her Gatsby within herself. While rambling at times, this is as a whole an excellent actor's autobiography; recommended for both public and academic libraries.?Ming-ming Shen Kuo, Ball St. Univ., Muncie, Ind.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; 1ST edition (November 10, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684808412
• ISBN-13: 978-0684808413
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,878,282 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A lovely surprise, June 13, 2000

By 

Linda Brown "Brizl" (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Looking for Gatsby (Hardcover)

Not knowing quite what to expect, I was happy to read a very warm, candid story by an actor whose work I admire a great deal. As Dunaway told her story, I could not help but think that her body of work would stand side by side with those actors of her generation who are so glorified -- Beatty, Nicholson, et. al. That she is not appreciated in the same way as those actors explains her vulnerability all the more. After reading this book, I would definitely have her over for dinner.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Faye Dunaway paints an impressionistic painting of her life, August 25, 1998

By 

"nycoperafanatic" (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Looking for Gatsby (Hardcover)

First of all, let me say that as "celebrity biographies" go, this is one of the better ones. Rather than produce a mere catalogue of people, places, and events, Faye Dunaway gives her readers impressionistic peeks into her life; her words are used like water-colored pastels to create a pleasing but not too controversial work. Although she overemphasizes pop-psychology explanations, Faye Dunaway still manages to bring her readers closer to Faye Dunaway the Woman and the Actress while chipping away at Faye Dunaway the Icon. It's a nice compliment to her work on film.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Well-written, insightful and intelligent., November 23, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Looking for Gatsby (Paperback)

With startling honesty, Dunaway intimately details her fascinating life. The book does lapse into mild self-indulgence at times, but her introspection reveals an interesting mind. Her fierce determination and dedication is vividly depicted, hinting at the price she paid for stardom, as well as painting an interesting portrait of what it is to be a female actor of her calibre and over fifty in Hollywood today.