A fascinating, quirky, and above all personal look at herself and her life by the renowned model/actress, who illuminates her life and her world in a brilliant mosaic of short takes accompanied by scores of pictures ranging from those she keeps on her bedside table to family snapshots and her many Richard Avedon Vogue covers. She writes of her mother, Ingrid Bergman: "Second to acting, Mother loved cleaning, which is not to say she loved even that above me. I'm sure she loved me more than cleaning, but what made her happiest was combining the two." She writes of her father, Roberto Rossellini: "My father was a Jewish mother.... When we were children (there were seven of us), one of our favorite games was throwing ourselves onto Daddy's body. Lying on his side, he pretended to be the sow and we were the piglets.". She writes about her famous nude scene in David Lynch's Blue Velvet and of posing for Avedon, Bruce Weber, and Steven Meisel. About being fired as the face of Lancome because she dared to turn forty. About the two years of scoliosis that blighted her adolescence. About acting as opposed to modeling. About being a daughter, a sister, and a mother. About her children: Elettra, who, when asked by her kindergarten teacher what she would do if she got lost in an airport, answered, "I'd look for my mamma's poster and wait underneath it for help"; and Roberto, her adopted son. About her unforgettable encounters with Anna Magnani (her father's onetime mistress) and Katharine Hepburn, as well as the peculiar behavior of her many pets. About her wardrobe. About lying. She talks - candidly yet discreetly - about the men in her life: her ex-husband Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, Gary Oldman. And she conducts intimate and extended dialogues with her beloved dead ones.
She was born Virginia Katherine McMath, but the world would come to know her—and love her—as Ginger Rogers: Broadway star, Academy Award-winning actress, and the ultimate on-screen dancing partner of the inimitable Fred Astaire. In Ginger: My Story, the legendary entertainer shares the triumphs of a remarkable career that began when she won a Texas dancing contest at age fourteen; the joys and heartbreaks of her five marriages; her relationships with some of Hollywood's major leading men, including Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, and damaged daredevil billionaire Howard Hughes; and the strength of her religious convictions that got her through thick and thin. Lavishly illustrated with rare photographs from the author's personal collection, Ginger is an enthralling, behind-the-scenes tour of Hollywood life during the Golden Age of movies by one of its most enduring stars.
Able to read and write at the age of two and a half, a pianist at four, and a composer by five, Philippa was often compared to Mozart. During the 1930s and '40s she graced the pages of Time and Look magazines, the New York Herald Tribune, and The New Yorker. Philippa grew up under the adoring and inquisitive eyes of an entire nation and soon became the role model and inspiration for a generation of African-American children. But as an adult she mysteriously dropped out of sight, leaving America to wonder what had happened to the "little Harlem genius." Suffering the double sting of racism and gender bias, Philippa had been rejected by the elite classical music milieu in the United States and forced to find an audience abroad, where she flourished as a world-class performer and composer. She traveled throughout South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia, performing for kings, queens, and presidents. By then Philippa had added a second career as an author and foreign correspondent reporting on events around the globe - from Albert Schweitzer's leper colony in Lamberene to the turbulent Asian theater of the 1960s. But behind the scrim of adventure, glamour, and intrigue was an American outcast, a woman constantly searching for home and self. "I am a beauty - but I'm half colored...so I'm always destined to be an outsider," she wrote in her diary. In a last attempt to reclaim an identity, she began to "pass" as Caucasian. Adopting an Iberian-American heritage, she reinvented herself as Felipa Monterro, an ultra-right conservative who wrote and lectured for the John Birch Society. Her experiment failed, as had her parents' dream of smashing America's racial barriers. But at the age of thirty five, Philippa finally began to embark on a racial catharsis: She was just beginning to find herself when on May 9, 1967, while on an unauthorized mission of mercy, her life was cut short in a helicopter crash over the waters of war-torn Vietnam.
The Academy Award-winning film star and best-selling author of Then Again describes the ups and downs of living in a beauty-obsessed world, recounting stories about a makeup artist's embarrassing advice, her trip to Victoria's Secret with her teen daughter and more.
The most ambitious and personal account ever written about Hollywood's most gracious star-Audrey Hepburn by Barry Paris is a "moving portrayal" (The New York Times Book Review) that truly captures the woman who captured our hearts...With the insights of family and friends who never before spoke to a Hepburn biographer-and never-before-published photographs-Paris has created an in-depth portrait of the actress, from her childhood in Nazi-occupied Europe, through her legendary career, and into her UN ambassadorship.
Some of me by Isabella Rossellini | Literally Just Books
