Tales from An Actor's Life

By Steven Berkoff

Performing Arts : Theater - General

Robson Press, The
Publication date: October 2011

ISBN: 9781849542821

Digital Book format: ePub (Adobe DRM)

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Long considered the enfant terrible of the British theatre as actor, director and writer and famous for such startling productions as Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis and The Trial, Oscar Wilde’s Salomé and Budd Schulberg’s On the Waterfront, among many others, Steven Berkoff is original in everything he does. Now, in this captivating book, he shares scenes from his own colourful theatrical life. In Tales from an Actor’s Life, Berkoff takes us on an informal tour of his extraordinary career. Using the third person to thinly disguise and protect the guilty, he is never less than entertaining and forthright in his accounts. Berkoff has seen it all, and here recalls his first job and the first line he ever uttered on stage, his early touring dates and disasters (and even romances) in rep, a traumatic audition for a revered Peter Brook, visiting Kirk Douglas at his home in L.A. and playing Hamlet the Berkoff way. Romantic though an actor’s life may seem to be, clearly it is often tough and laced with tears. But there is laughter and camaraderie too, and in these delightful tales Berkoff gives the reader a real insight and feeling of what it is like to tread the boards, and the passion, work and intuition that goes into creating a role.