Showing results for "simon callow"

A revised and expanded edition of the classic book for actors starting their careers."The most honest book written about us all." —Sir Ian McKellanFew actors have ever been more eloquent, more honest, or more entertaining about their life and their profession than Simon Callow, one of the finest actors of his time and increasingly one of the most admired writers about the theater.Beginning with the letter to Laurence Olivier that pr...

Simon Callow's candid and moving memoir of his passionate friendship with legendary literary agent Peggy Ramsay.' Exquisite... Perhaps the best theatrical memoir of our day' David Hare

An alternative autobiography of the well-loved actor and man of the theatre, winner of the Sheridan Morley Prize for Theatre Biography.In My Life in Pieces Simon Callow retraces his life through the multifarious performers, writers, productions and events which have left their indelible mark on him.The story begins with Peter Pan – his first ever visit to the theatre – before transporting us to southern Africa and South London, where Callow spent much of h...

When Simon Callow met the Yugoslav film director Dusan Makavejev to discuss his new film Manifesto, they both greatly looked forward to working together. Only months later the two were barely speaking.A companion volume to Being An Actor, Shooting the Actor is a funny and disastrous account of a film made in the former Yugoslavia, together with new essays on film and film acting including Callow's work in Amadeus and Four Weddings and a Funeral.

**• A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice •The third volume of Simon Callow’s acclaimed Orson Welles biography, covering the period of his exile from America (1947–1964), when he produced some of his greatest works, including Touch of Evil**In One-Man Band, the third volume in his epic and all-inclusive survey of Orson Welles’s life and work, the celebrated British actor Simon Callow again probes in comprehensive and penetrating detail into...

This is an examination of 'The Night of the Hunter', Charles Laughton's only outing as a film director. It looks at the symbolism of the piece, at Willa, her throat cut sitting in the Model-T Ford, and the Preacher, a silhouetted threat on the horizon.

The Night of the Hunter (1955) was Charles Laughton's only film as director. Part expressionist horror movie, part luminous fairy tale, it contains some of the most haunting images in cinema. Willa (Shelley Winters) her throat cut and hair streaming out like seaweed, sitting upright in a submerged Model-T Ford. Her children, framed by looming animals, in a downriver flight from Preacher (Robert Mitchum). Preacher on horseback, a silhouetted threat on the horizon. Rachel Cooper (Li...

A London theater school resists the cultural shifts of the 1960s in this novel by the Booker Prize-winning author—with an introduction by Simon Callow.It is the 1960s, and London's West End theaters all rely on Freddie Wentworth, the formidable proprietress of the Temple Stage School, to supply them with child actors for their productions of everything from Shakespeare to musicals to Christmas pantomimes. Of unknown age and origin, Freddie is a skirt-swathed enigma...

The world-famous masterpiece by Nobel laureate Thomas Mann—here in a new translation by Michael Henry HeimPublished on the eve of World War I, a decade after Buddenbrooks had established Thomas Mann as a literary celebrity, Death in Venice tells the story of Gustave von Aschenbach, a successful but aging writer who follows his wanderlust to Venice in search of spiritual fulfillment that instead leads to his erotic doom.In the decaying city, besieged by an u...

Bloomsbury Presents The Night of the Hunter, read and written by Simon CallowThe Night of the Hunter (1955) was Charles Laughton's only film as director. Part expressionist horror movie, part luminous fairy tale, it contains some of the most haunting images in cinema. Willa (Shelley Winters) her throat cut and hair streaming out like seaweed, sitting upright in a submerged Model-T Ford. Her children, framed by looming animals, in a downriver flight from Preacher (...

A short biography of Charles Dickens by acclaimed actor and writer Simon Callow that offers a fresh perspective on one of the greatest novelists in the English language in a lively, highly readable account. "It has all the gusto that a popular biography of Dickens—a man who “could do nothing by halves”—should possess. . . . The best biography for Dickens newcomers and a wonderful read for all."—Library JournalDickens was one of the first true celebrity authors. Thousands o...

Simon Callow, the celebrated author of Orson Welles, delivers a dazzling, swift, and accessible biography of the musical titan Richard Wagner and his profoundly problematic legacy--a fresh take for seasoned acolytes and the perfect introduction for new fans.Richard Wagner's music dramas have never been more popular or more divisive. His ten masterpieces, created against the backdrop of a continent in severe political and cultural upheaval, constitute an un...