Customer Reviews

Motherhood and Hollywood: How to Get a Job Like Mine

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Patricia Heaton and I were born 8 days apart, in different Ohio cities. We both grew up in loving families, and attended parochial schools. That's where the similarities seem to end. Patricia has four young sons, I have one neurotic dog. She is a famous TV star, and I'm, well, not. But the overwhelming feeling I had after reading this book was, "I would love to have lunch with her sometime."

Take for example a marital conversation Patricia recounts. She read in a book that, "instead of fighting . . .couples should say the word 'tone' when they feel they are being unfairly accosted verbally." Patricia and her husband, "tried that once without much success. It began with me nicely asking him to take out the garbage and him saying 'Tone.' So I toned his tone. He toned my toning of his tone. Our marriage counselor told us we were both tone deaf. My husband thought Tone Def would be a cool name for a rap group or a record label."

Not only did I laugh out loud, I turned to my husband and informed him that someone has been listening in on our conversations. You will undoubtedly have a similar deja vu experience as you read this book if you are married or have children, if you were once a child, if you ever worked at a survival job, or if you are now a fabulously successful TV star.

Buy Patricia Heaton's book, pour a tall glass of your favorite beverage, curl up on the sofa and treat yourself to a funny, insightful, real and touching read. You won't regret it.

Whether you live in Hollywood or Iowa, whether you are a mother yourself or simply live vicariously (as do I) through 19 nieces & nephews as well as dozens of children belonging to friends, no matter what profession you find yourself in, you are GUARANTEED to identify with the words of Patricia Heaton! She speaks as one who as lived "in the trenches". Plain-spoken, self-deprecating, and just as witty when writing her own words as acting those onstage from a script, this book is simply fun. It gives you that warm, familiar feeling that makes you finish the last page and immediately want more. I already admired her, but my respect for her willingness to share all the gritty, true, not-so-pretty details that are everyday life make me respect her immeasurably. This one has definite laugh-out-loud, earn-stares-from-others-on-the-bus passages. In another time, I believe Patricia Heaton would have been the one to gladly announce that the emperor not only has no clothes, but is an idiot! Bravo!!

The Emmy-Award-winning actress who portrays the beleaguered Debra Barone on _Everybody Loves Raymond_ has written her autobiography to prove to us that, unlike her TV counterpart, Patricia Heaton has real friends and relatives who *do* love and support her. The title of the book is a bit misleading, though. While she talks about being a wife and mother and raising her four boys, and she describes her road toward becoming a successful actress, often the monologue returns to memories of her childhood. Growing up Catholic in a western suburb of Cleveland, she went on to major in drama at Ohio State and then (of course) went off to The Big Apple to make it big. There she subletted apartment after apartment and worked as a waitress, modelled shoes and wrote copy while trying to get auditions. We follow her path (almost predictably) to Los Angeles and her eventual arrival on the _Raymond_ series. She writes the way she talks, and some of the childhood stories are laugh-out-loud funny. One of the most amusing scenes comes when the Heaton family hosts "a Negro couple" for dinner on the very same night in 1966 that the Beatles appear on _The Ed Sullivan Show_. Those of us who grew up in the 1960s -- when entire neighborhoods were our playgrounds -- have similar moments tucked away in our heads. If we could join in her conversation here, we'd soon be swapping stories and having a merry old time ourselves.

Ms. Heaton tells a few tales on herself: she wet the bed until the age of ten, lost her mother to a brain aneurism when she was twelve, had plastic surgery several times. And there's a lot she keeps to herself, too. A first marriage is mentioned in passing, a few drug references are thrown in here and there. And she tells no tales on her series co-stars, except when she talks about the cast's trip to NYC on September 10, 2001, in order to promote the new season. The actress already had a commendable perspective on the entertainment business and her own success by that time. What she lived through that week helped to reinforce it as well as her commitment to her family.

This book is a quick read that's not a "tell-all" but is definitely a "told enough."

What a wonderful book Ms. Heaton has put together. I have just re-read it and I enjoyed it even more the 2nd time. Gee- no trash, no dark passages about her life. It was fun, positive and strong. I don't have a lot of respect for Hollywood "people" but she has shown us that a normal person can make it in Hollywood. What makes it even more refreshing is that she has values and is not concerned about sharing them. It also made me yearn for those childhood days when we could just play all day and not worry about everyone being a potential weirdo. Something our kids will never get to experience. Thank you for a great book Patricia!

A dear friend mailed this book to me ~~ and I have to say, it is a light and refreshing as well as honest look at motherhood and Hollywood. I have always liked Patricia Heaton in "Everyone Loves Raymond" ~~ and definitely like her better after reading her book. With a light touch, she talks about her life before and after becoming famous and being a mom. She tells her story with humor and grace ~~ and being a mom of two boys, I can relate to her experiences with motherhood and wifehood. What a fun book!

This is one of the better autobiographies I have read in awhile. Patricia is a down-to-earth woman who happens to live in la-la land called Hollywood. And after reading this book, I wish her well in future endeavors ~~ perhaps more on her family life would be wonderful!

If you're looking for a lighter and fun read to while away some free time, I highly recommend this book. It is a sure bet that you'll finish this book and beg for more. She's that good.

12-05-02

I love Patricia's character "Debra" on ELR. She's a wonderful actress who like may actors had to overcome many hurdles to make it. Let's face it.. the chances of making it in hollywood are slim. Parts of the book were funny like all the odd jobs she worked just to get by. I guess i related because I also made the mistake of working for my college cafeteria for one semester. When you need to survive, you would work anywhere!!

Besides random jobs, Patricia does go into many other parts of her life: Ohio, family, friends, etc. It was a nice quick read! I saw some reviews which accused her of being "whiney" and "ungrateful." Come on now! she had a hard time getting here...Why glorify the dead-end jobs? Also, why does she need to thank Ray Romano all the time???? This is a story about her, not a story of how great Ray is!

Anyways, i bought this book to learn more about Patricia Heaton; however, I think i only got a 5,000 foot view of who she is. I know she wrote an number of memoirs and put them together to produce this book, but I wish there was more! How did she get on ELR and other roles? Any roles which she was rejected from? How did it affect her? What happened in the first marriage? How was her emotional state during all this? What about her new production company?

Maybe i'm asking for toooooo much? I recently read the book by lance armstrong... which i thought was amazing. I guess I was hoping Patricia's book would be similar knowing that she struggled quite a bit.

All in all, if you're patricia heaton fan, you will love this book no matter what. She can do no wrong in many people's minds. Personally, as an avid reader, I thought the book was lite reading. Something that you would read once (maybe twice) and pass on. I still have tremendous respect for her as an actress and would love to see Patricia act in other shows/movies. If not, maybe when ELR ends, she'll have more time and write a second book that would put this one to shame.

The world of Hollywood is one that introduces our current society to an array of different people. The choices they make, the behaviors they express and the dispositions conveyed are all contributing factors to this world. Unfortunately, it has become somewhat of a norm to come across Hollywood actors and actresses with negative messages that do not impact others the way they should.

I am sure that Patricia Heaton is not perfect, but by reading her memoir I was introduced to a person who seems like she may have something special--something just a little bit different. Heaton's role as a devoted wife and very loving mother on the sitcom "Everybody Loves Raymond" has helped her establish herself as a positive role model in the often dysfunctional world of Hollywood. She has humor and a great deal of class, both of which are terrific qualities that aided her in penning a worthy book.

"Motherhood and Hollywood" is a memoir that works very well for itself. It is basically 207 pages of Patricia Heaton tossing out various little stories from her childhood and offering a humorous commentary on many events in her life. She probably figured that people would love just reading a book about her human side and the everyday human stuff she does on a regular basis, and she was right. She acknowledges early on that much of what she wrote about her childhood was inspired from her former diaries, and you can tell by the way she writes it that it was clearly pulled right from the pages of a little girl's diary (which does, in a sense, make it all the more endearing).

That being said, there are a few very important elements that make this particular actress's story worth reading. For starters, she is a genuinely funny person, incorporating a lot of personal anecdotes and ideas about her life without grappling with wordy sentences or complicated storylines. She simply tells everything as it is, not sugar-coating anything or hiding behind any kind of facade. Too many Hollywood figures out there tend to play along into something fake in an attempt to tap the public into something that doesn't really exist, but Patricia Heaton doesn't go there. She is honest in her words about her family and career, and she displays gratitude for it without going way over the top. This indicates someone who is telling a story openly and using her own voice without worrying what other people are going to think about it.

I do agree with another reviewer here in that it would have been nice to read more about Patricia's experiences on "Everybody Loves Raymond." Given that this show's 9-year run was clearly a large part of her life, I would have loved to see how she related to all her fellow castmates, especially the three kids who played her children. One thing I have to say is that I have never heard Patricia (or any of the "Raymond" cast, for that matter) talk much about the Sweeten kids. Granted, they were not a huge part of the show at all and did not even appear in every episode, but the formula used with them worked quite nicely on the show, and it would be nice to read about the interactions that went on behind the scenes with everyone involved.

Maybe it was important, though, for Patricia not to go into too much depth in her book about "Raymond." Maybe by generally keeping quiet about it and only mentioning it briefly a couple of times, she was illustrating something very important. After all, a lot of people who drone on and on about certain things and talk about how "amazing" they were are trying to hide something. It seems that Patricia had a great experience working on this show, and she doesn't need to go on about it at great length in a memoir to show that. She doesn't have anything to prove to anyone, and that is a sign of a truly classy person.

Another huge factor in Patricia's book that I liked is how well she combined several emotional parts of her life with a humorous edge to prevent it from being too corny or unbelievable. Take her mother, for example, who died when she was about 12. She gives a beautiful tribute to her mom in one chapter, recalling some of those most special things about her without feeling the need to go overboard with it. The same went with her father--she expresses a genuine affection and admiration for him while keeping it real in her method of expressing it. Her four sons and her husband, too, are discussed at various points in the book, but never once does Patricia resort to the cliche "I have this perfect, amazing family and nobody is better than them" line. Essentially, she conveys more power and love in what she does not say, and in that she manages to put together something that can make you laugh while also shedding light on her position as a happy, normal, and well-adjusted individual.

As another reviewer on this site also said, I did notice that Heaton's writing style occasionally indicates some sarcasm and even a bit of superficiality, like she's bragging a little about how she was raised by normal parents and had a normal, happy childhood. On the other hand, though, I think she is just trying to get some humor across, not really meaning to be rude, but just trying to convey the fact that not every Hollywood star is a fixed "statistic." In a lot of ways, it is very refreshing to get the perspective of a person who was brought up by what seems to be a very normal and well-adjusted family.

Perhaps the single aspect of this book that I enjoyed more than anything else is the major reason I recommend it so highly to fans of Patricia Heaton. Toward the end, she discusses her two Emmy wins for her role on "Raymond." Keeping up her tradition of being wholly honest, she admits that these accomplishments were among the most incredible and surreal experiences in her life, but in the end it was just a matter of having 15 minutes of fame. The flame doesn't burn forever; the limelight does not hold for more than a couple of weeks. New people are coming up with personal successes every day, and those preceding them are, in a sense, overshadowed. It's not a matter of being pessimistic: it's REALITY. I give Patricia an amazing amount of credit for writing that; I applaud her for admitting that she enjoys those earthly things but acknowledges that some things are just plain MORE IMPORTANT. When all is said and done, she has her family, friends, and other people in her life who mean more than an Emmy award ever could.

Yes, believe it or not, there are still people in this world who are promoting that kind of beautiful message, and there are some Hollywood figures who are worth listening to and respecting.

If you are seeking to find out exactly what Patricia Heaton's book is about, it can pretty much be summarized with that sole piece of information.

But at the same time, don't expect it to be too cheesy or sticky sweet. Patricia uses the perfect blend of sincerity and humor here, not unlike her Debra character on "Raymond," and I feel priveleged to have come across her book. Any fan will enjoy reading it and feel good in knowing that while this actress inevitably has her own imperfections like everyone else, she also has something special and admirable in her own right that nobody can take away.

Most of the reviews for this book are several years old, and the book itself is now half-a-dozen years in print. So why bother with another review? One reason is because the show is thriving now in syndication and may be attracting new fans who will find this book for the first time, and I want those fans to know it is still a relevant and insightful work to get. But perhaps not for the reasons you think...

Another reason is because time provides perspective. While the show is still wonderful and truly an established classic now, it is no longer the reason to go looking for books and more information about it. Other shows have come along an replaced it in terms of popularity or "must-see" status. The stories of the behind-the-scenes life are mostly passe' for contemporary audiences, other than for historical interest. So why should you spend the money, time and effort to read "Motherhood and Hollywood"?

A few years removed from "Raymond," Patricia Heaton is an award-winning actress who can still attract legions of male fans with her looks and her style, and there is something about her that makes her so real she is all the more attractive. For a woman in beauty-saturated Hollywood who is now past 50, that's quite an accomplishment. Amazingly, at the same time she can also attract legions of female fans because she is down-to-earth approachable and her "real life" is not so different in priorities, challenges, and nature than their own. Again, for the public to have this general perspective says a great deal about Patricia. For many, she is the wife men desire and the wife women desire to be, and that is a rare combination indeed.

But this is a review of her book, not Patricia herself. Here is my point on why you should read "Motherhood" and how perspective fits into it: From all accounts I have found, she is still the same woman. Sound trite? Hollywood is a place of compromises, failures, and facade, yet Heaton is still the same woman you meet in this book, and that, to me, indicates a depth of character worth looking closer at. She is still married and committed to that, she still talks about motherhood as her life, she still maintains her independent views despite their low popularity among the celeb elite, and she still is grounded in faith and family. Despite the success, despite the unrealistic expectations of fans, despite new trials to find success again.

There are plenty of descriptions in the other reviews on the tidbits Heaton chooses to cover and what she doesn't, but I want to make a point on her style. It has been criticized for hopping around or for using some course metaphors, and those things are true. She seems selective in what she says and doesn't say, and that is true. But there is, to me, a huge benefit to this. I finished this book feeling as though I had spent time in conversation with a real human being. It's not a formula driven publicity piece. It's not intended to be a comprehensive biography of every nuance of her life. It is like she sits down and says "here are the things I want to tell you about myself, because of all the things in my life, these are the ones that I define myself by." Upon finishing the book, I felt like I knew Patricia Heaton, not that I just knew a lot of things about her.

So, get to know this unusual star. You can get the background on "Raymond" in many other books and places, and don't expect a lot of that here. It's worth a few hours, though, to sit down and get to know the person Patty Heaton.

Add me to the "would love to have lunch with her" list.

Motherhood & Hollywood is an ideal book to take on an L.A. to Hawaii flight. (It's a perfect 5-hour read.) If you're a 40-something mom, a wife and a mother, then there is so much in this book that you will relate too and laugh at. Several times during my flight I burst out laughing. But even if you're none of the above, you will still enjoy this book.

Patricia Heaton has a wonderful writing style. Not just because she's funny and witty. It has more to do with the way her words flow. Only one thing about the book bothered me...she doesn't tell us the name of her cosmetic surgeon. I want that name!

I was only on page 24 and was looking for an email address for Ms. Heaton to tell her how much I love her work. When talking about her childhood, it brought back wonderful memories of mine. Life was, truly, so much simpler then. I feel like she is me, or I am her. What a marvelous sense of humor! I will buy everything she writes, and I do hope we see more!A chuckle from beginning to end.