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Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury) | 921 DUNAWAY | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
In an "intelligent, take-no-prisoners memoir" ("Entertainment Weekly"), Academy Award-winning actress Faye Dunaway writes candidly of her life, including her many affairs, her two marriages, her professional success, and her poignant failures. of photos.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
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 marriagesto J. Geils Band lead singer Peter Wolf, then to her manager, film producer Terry O'Neilland 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. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Movies and leading men and all too little self-awareness in this stagey, unrevealing autobiography. Even by the standards of Hollywood, Dunaway has had a remarkably uneven career. While she turned in signal performances on stage and in important films such as Bonnie and Clyde, Chinatown, and Network (for which she won an Oscar), she has also starred in a series of forgettable failures where her acting was often the only redeeming feature. And she has been burdened since early in her career--when she refused, mid-movie, to ever work again with Otto Preminger--by a reputation for being difficult, or rather, if you believe directors like Roman Polanski, for being a monstrously demanding prima donna. Dunaway (aided by New York Times correspondent Sharkey) tries, not quite convincingly, to lay some of the worst stories to rest or at least offer her justifications. She also wastes few opportunities to remind us of what a smart, incredibly gifted actress she is: ``There are those who elevate the craft of acting to the art of acting, and now I would be among them.'' As for many actors, the nature of identity has frequently been problematic for her: Who is the real person behind all the roles? Much of this memoir, then, is taken up with Dunaway's attempts to ``find herself,'' whether it be through buying handfuls of houses or her relationships with a number of talented men (hence the title) or with that old and expensive unreliable-- psychoanalysis. Despite some revealing insights into her acting technique, this endless self-absorption adds up to little more than a score of particularly trite platitudes and actressy hyperbole that could thrill only the most die-hard fans. Dunaway should stick to what she does best: breathing life into other people's lives. (16 pages b&w photos, not seen) (First serial to Cosmopolitan; author tour)
Library Journal Review
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. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
