English Actors

The life of Joan Crawford is one of the most famous Hollywood rags-to-riches tales. While it is common to think of Hollywood as a land offering great opportunity to hardworking actresses, the Horatio Alger myth rarely applies in reality, but it applied almost perfectly to Joan Crawford. Joan Crawford's life and career also shed light on the treatment of women in pop culture and in cinema during the early 20th century. Her career was not only limited to film acting, as she acted in musical revues and was previously an unabashed flapper during the Roaring Twenties.

Young, cocksure, handsome and absurdly talented, Australian actor Heath Ledger shot to prominence with his first Hollywood film "10 Things I Hate About You": and a star was born. With huge charisma and smouldering looks lighting up the screen in a series of subsequent films, Heath was soon established as Hollywood A-list, dating a series of beauties such as Heather Graham and Naomi Watts, and living every young man's dream.

Once Upon a Time there was a woman who embodied the secret fantasies of every woman of her time. She was a classic beauty, the daughter of a millionaire, an Academy Award-winning actress, and then, after she married Rainier of Monaco, a real-life princess. This audiobooks takes an unprecedented look at the lives of Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier and answers the question: Did they live happily ever after?

Merle Oberon made history when she was announced as a nominee for the Best Actress Oscar in 1936. Her nomination marked the first time the Academy recognized a performer of color. Oberon, born to a South Asian mother and white father, broke through a racial barrier—but no one knew it. Oberon was "passing" for white. In the first biography of Oberon in more than forty years, Mayukh Sen draws on family interviews and untapped archival material to capture the life of an oft-forgotten talent.

Clifton Webb was one of those rare motion picture actors who became a major box-office star when he was in his mid-50s. Indeed, his first sound movie was Laura (1944), and his role as Waldo Lydecker in that classic film noir earned him the first of three Oscar nominations. Four years later, Clifton Webb became a household name when he played Lynn Belvedere and poured a bowl of mush onto a baby's head in Sitting Pretty.

From the moment Elizabeth Taylor and Michael Jackson met, they were hooked on each other. Soon a deep friendship blossomed unexpectedly, unlike anything either had ever experienced. Through thick and thin, through their various emotional upheavals, through the peaks and valleys of their careers, through their personal traumas and heartaches, through the unending health issues and extreme physical pain that each experienced, and through the glare of the often merciless public spotlight, their bond held them together, and their love for each other endured.

Richard Hatch, known to millions of sci-fi fans as Captain Apollo and Tom Zarek, has recorded an audio book of his memoirs of both the original and re-imagined versions of Battlestar Galactica. His experiences on both versions of Battlestar Galactica are vividly recalled as he shares many indelible memories of the iconic actors he appeared alongside, and the challenges and barriers one of the most expensive shows in TV history faced at a time when networks were highly sceptical of Sci-fi in general.

This eclectic volume traces Rigg’s career as a renowned star of television, film, and the stage. The author includes insights from rare, archived interviews, encompassing both video dialogues conducted by the University of Kent and Oxford Union.

In 1930, William Haines was Hollywood's #1 box-office draw - a talented, handsome, and wisecracking romantic lead. Off screen, however, protected by a careful collaboration between studio and press, he was openly gay with reporters and studio chiefs alike. Here is Haines's virtually unknown story - rich with detail, revelations, and scandal - about silent movies and talkies; his lover Jimmie Shields, and their fifty-year relationship.

One of the more well-known Mel Brooks quips is his statement, in reference to his birth, that "we were so poor, my mother couldn't afford to have me; the lady next door gave birth to me." While obviously fabricated, the story is worthy of note, as it illustrates Brooks' self-deprecatory Jewish humor and his way of transforming a childhood of deep adversity into fodder for comedy.

The war came back at Pallas Group Solutions. Chris and Nick both found themselves fighting for their families’ lives. In response, they struck back. Now, with two major underworld figures dead, who had facilitated crimes for the People’s Republic of China, the cartels, and others, the war has entered a new phase.

Gene Eliza Tierney (November 19, 1920-November 6, 1991), born in New York City, was an American stage and film actress. Acclaimed for her great beauty, Tierney was a prominent leading lady during the Golden Age of Hollywood. She starred in Otto Preminger's Laura (1944), a film noir classic, and in John M. Stahl's Leave Her to Heaven (1945), which earned Tierney a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. Darryl F. Zanuck, co-founder of 20th Century Fox, said Tierney was "unquestionably, the most beautiful woman in movie history."

The work of Mike Nichols pervades American cultural consciousness - from The Graduate and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? to Angels in America, The Birdcage, Working Girl, and Primary Colors, not to mention his string of hit plays, including Barefoot in the Park and The Odd Couple. Over a career that spanned half a century, Mike Nichols changed Hollywood, Broadway, and comedy forever. Here, for the first time, Ash Carter and Sam Kashner offer an intimate look behind the scenes of Nichols' life.

An Actor Performs goes from the very basics of acting, to scene study, and to the development of one-person shows. It expands on text analysis, characterization, and use of language. The book explores what is most essential for the actor: imagination, biography, research.

Millions know Daisy Ridley as Rey in the Star Wars movies, but what was her life like before she got her big break? Daisy Ridley: Behind the Rebel tells the life story of the girl from Westminster, England, who grew up dreaming of becoming a veterinarian before discovering that she could sing, dance, and act. This children's biography will satisfy young listeners interested in finding out more about the actress behind Rey.

In 1994 the American Film Institute gave a Lifetime Achievement Award to Jack Nicholson, who became one of the youngest actors ever to receive the award. Such tributes typically come as a capstone to a star's career, not when the actor is still in his 50s. In fact Nicholson would go on to win the Oscar for Best Actor just a few years after receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award as a result of As Good As It Gets (1997), and he would earn another Academy Award nomination for About Schmidt (2002).

Oliver Cane has his dream job as a book publicist and his dream man—until he finds his boyfriend buried five inches deep in someone else. Heartbroken, Oli throws himself into work, preparing for the movie release of a book adaptation for one of his lead titles. The perfect distraction comes in the form of a handsome man having a breakdown in the toilets at the film's premiere. The two of them comfort each other and then make a deal—one night of anonymity and passion as they lose themselves in each other.

This is the definitive biography of the most powerful man in Hollywood during the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s, the man who founded The Hollywood Reporter and the most storied nightspots of the Sunset Strip. In the 30 years as Tinseltown’s premier behind-the-scenes power broker, Billy Wilkerson introduced Clark Gable and Lana Turner to the world, brought the Mafia to Hollywood, and engineered the shakedown of the Hollywood studios by Willie Bioff and his mob-run unions. He also helped to invent Las Vegas, tangled with Bugsy Siegel (and possibly was involved with his murder), and touched off the Hollywood blacklist.

In a career that has spanned more than 60 years, Robert Wagner has witnessed the twilight of the Golden Age of Hollywood and the rise of television, becoming a beloved star in both media. During that time he became acquainted, both professionally and socially, with the remarkable women who were the greatest screen personalities of their day. I Loved Her in the Movies is his intimate and revealing account of the charisma of these women on film, why they became stars, and more.

At the age of 17, in the glory days of moviemaking, Piper Laurie was living every little girl's dream. A contract star with Universal, Piper was elevated to the heights of Hollywood, her name emblazoned on 1950s marquees across America for hit movies like The Prince Who Was a Thief, The Mississippi Gambler, and Ain't Misbehavin'. Meanwhile, Piper's beauty was admired by the likes of Ronald Reagan, Howard Hughes, Paul Newman, and Tony Curtis as well as dozens of directors and legions of fans.