sTORI Telling (Hardcover)

by Tori Spelling (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Book Description
She was television's most famous virgin--and, as Aaron Spelling's daughter, arguably its most famous case of nepotism. Portraying Donna Martin on Beverly Hills, 90210, Tori Spelling became one of the most recognizable young actresses of her generation, with a not-so-private personal life every bit as fascinating as her character's exploits. Yet years later the name Tori Spelling too often closed--and sometimes slammed--the same doors it had opened.

sTORI Telling is Tori's chance to finally tell her side of the tabloid-worthy life she's led, and she talks about it all: her decadent childhood birthday parties, her nose job, her fairy-tale wedding to the wrong man, her so-called feud with her mother. Tori has already revealed her flair for brilliant, self-effacing satire on her VH1 show So NoTORIous and Oxygen's Tori & Dean: Inn Love, but her memoir goes deeper, into the real life behind the rumors: her complicated relationship with her parents; her struggles as an actress after 90210; her accident-prone love life; and, ultimately, her quest to define herself on her own terms.

From her over-the-top first wedding to finding new love to her much-publicized--and misunderstood--"disinheritance," sTORI Telling is a juicy, eye-opening, enthralling look at what it really means to be Tori Spelling.

---

Amazon.com Exclusive
A Bonus Story and Family Photo from Tori Spelling

The Manor
People are always asking about my parents' mansion, which they called the "Manor," but I don't really spend much time talking about it in sTORI Telling because I didn't grow up there. After demolishing Bing Crosby's former estate in Holmby Hills, a fancy neighborhood in west L.A., they spent six years building the Manor. It's about 46,000 square feet (slightly over an acre) and has 123 rooms. Not that I counted or measured. I got those figures from the press, just like everyone else.

Anyway, we moved in when I was seventeen and I only lived there for two years. In some ways the house is like a normal house, but everything is on a bigger scale. It has four floors: the basement (which we call the "Lower Level," probably because that's its designation on the elevator) and the first, second, and third floors. The first floor has a kitchen, a breakfast room, a dining room, an office, a family room, a living room, and a projection room. There's a grand foyer with sweeping staircases on each side. Oh, and there's also a guards' room and the staff dining room. Everyone except fancy guests comes through the service entrance into a hallway with the guards' room and the kitchen.

The kitchen is gigantic, and my fondest memory of it is from when I was twenty-one and had just moved back in after splitting up with a boyfriend. I came home drunk with some girlfriends, and we pillaged the two double-sized Sub-Zero refrigerators. There was always bulk food in there for the staff. We pulled out a big vat of chicken salad and a tub of peanut dressing, both of which looked like they'd been made for giants. Somewhere in the middle of our feast we decided to have a food fight, and the five of us started flinging food at each other. Soon we were covered in peanut dressing from head to toe and the pristine kitchen was a mess. Then we heard a ding, the elevator doors opened, and there was my mother.

She stared at us in silent disbelief. I said, "We're going to clean it up!" She just said, "Mmm hmm," and left the room. I felt a surge of love for her in that moment. It took us hours to clean the kitchen, but it was worth it. That moment made it feel, for once, like home. --Tori Spelling

---

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

PROLOGUE

When you're a kid, you don't worry what anyone thinks. You go around saying whatever pops into your head or picking your teeth, and it never occurs to you that someone might think you're gross, awkward, or ridiculous. That was me -- picking my nose, snorting when I laughed, wearing white after Labor Day -- I just was who I was. That all changed one day at the tender age of twelve when I was getting ready for a family photo. We were having a formal family portrait taken with our dogs (doesn't everyone do that?), and I was getting frustrated with my bangs. I couldn't get them to do whatever a twelve-year-old in 1985 wanted bangs to do. So I went into my parents' bathroom, all dressed up, with my hair done as best I could manage, and asked my mother, "Am I pretty?"

She looked at me and said, "You will be when we get your nose done."

I was stunned. My nose, as noses tend to be, was right in the middle of my face, and I had just been told that it was ugly. So long, innocence.

To be fair, let the record show that my mother has absolutely no recollection of making this comment. I know this because in high school I took a class called Human Development, taught by Mrs. Wildflower. In it we had to keep a journal (her name was Mrs. Wildflower -- what did you expect?), and when Mrs. Wildflower read my story about the nose incident, she called my parents. That afternoon I came home to find my mother crying. She said, "I never said that. I'd never say something like that." I'm sure she was telling the truth as she remembered it.

Nonetheless, I had my nose done the minute I turned sixteen. Or didn't you hear? But what I realized as a twelve-year-old was bigger than that I was destined for the plastic surgeon's chair. I realized that how other people saw me wasn't necessarily how I saw myself. Feeling pretty or smart or happy wasn't all there was to it. What I hadn't considered before was how I was perceived. And it wasn't the last criticism I'd hear about my nose.

Little did I know then how huge a role public perception would play in my life. My nose, and pretty much every other "prominent" body part and feature, would be prey to gossip and tabloids in just a few years. But the unwanted attention wasn't limited to my body. According to the press, I was the rich, spoiled daughter of TV producer Aaron Spelling. They claimed I grew up in California's largest single-family residence. They said that my father had fake snow made on his Beverly Hills lawn for Christmas. They said I was the ultimate example of nepotism, a lousy actor who nonetheless scored a lead role in her father's hit TV show. They pigeonholed me as my character on Beverly Hills, 90210: Donna Martin, the ditzy blonde virgin. They later talked about my wedding, my divorce, and my second wedding. They reported that I'd been disinherited and was feuding with my mother. They told about the birth of my son. What I learned from my ugly nose was true times a million: The details of my life were a