The most recommended books about actors

What is it like to be a lawyer in the information age? Janice Hallett’s characters show us, in this update of the epistolary novel. Two lawyers are handed a sheaf of emails, text messages, police reports, press releases, and medical records by their firm’s top partner. He tells them that he wants fresh eyes on documents pertaining to a case he tried and may appeal. He won’t prejudice their reading of the material by explaining what the crime was or who committed it, much less what the court decided or why he might challenge the ruling. Along with the reader, the lawyers sift through documents that offer an intriguing look at the players, eventually revealing who did what. It’s an excellent puzzle with a modern twist on a time-honored structure.

Matt is an actor, which means he is constantly jockeying for jobs in what might be the most competitive industry on the planet. He explains that dealing with rejection and coming back after failure is part of the process of getting to the “YES” that you want in life. He shares advice from his interviews with bestselling authors, world-class athletes, successful entrepreneurs, and other actors—all of whom share their stories of rejection and defeat and make us realize that hearing “NO” does not mean you will not achieve your dreams – it just means that you need to try again, from a different angle. 

I majored in dramatic arts in college and later became a professional actress. Though I haven’t acted in years, I wanted to read this book because I’m a huge fan of the book’s author, the late Antony Sher.

Antony Sher was one of the great English actors. As a teenager, Antony left his home in South Africa to try his luck as an actor in England. Though he failed to be accepted to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, he gradually learned the art of being an actor, became a leading player with the Royal Shakespeare Company, and was given a knighthood.

Success didn’t come easily or quickly. Sher struggled with being an outsider: a South African, a Jew, and a gay man in England. Most of all, he struggled with self-doubt that plagued him his entire life. The book recounts in great part his detailed crafting of his first… show more.

Written from an actor’s perspective, Shakespeare The Player researches acting companies in Stratford-on-Avon and England during Shakespeare’s youth and adolescence. Southwark explores the possibilities of Shakespeare spending those “Lost Years” from 1585-1592 as an apprentice with acting companies. Shakespeare The Player provides otherwise obscure information about the world of the theater during Shakespeare’s formative years as an actor and writer. 

How else did Shakespeare learn the crafts of writing, playing, and directing for which Robert Greene lambasted that “upstart crow…the only Shakes-scene in a country” in 1592?

Discovering the art of Alejandro Jodorowsky helped me to remove limitations from my own art. It was a joy to discover his work and it was a further joy to discover that his life has been just as uncompromising, surreal, and magical as his art. He has hung out with circus people, shamans, great artists (Marcel Marceau, Leonora Carrington, Jean Giraud… the list goes on). His novels, autobiographies, comic books, movies, and pictures are all fantastic. 

Interior Chinatown is one of my all-time favorite novels. It has a personal meaning for me—through marriage I have ties to Los Angeles’s Chinatown, and Yu captures that community’s past and present so compellingly. 

The book’s main character, Willis Wu, pursues his dream of becoming a Hollywood leading man, navigating the complexities of Chinese American life and the pressures of American racism. Through Willis’s struggles, Yu provides a sharp expose of Hollywood and its stereotypes. By using the format of a script and, at points fusing reality with fantasy, Yu’s narrative becomes intensively gripping and visual.

This book drops you into Willis Wu’s world and you feel his frustrations, share his dreams, and experience his hope.  

The final sentence of The Mask of Apollo has haunted me for decades since I first read the book in my teens. When I read it again, many years later, I discovered that the story is as moving as I remembered. Renault weaves a fascinating re-creation of classical Greek theatre with Plato’s attempt to tutor a true philosopher king in the kingdom of Syracuse. But it’s the final chapter, after Plato’s death, that raises the book to the level of tragedy. For then we meet the young Alexander, already almost god-like in his charisma, a fire seeking fuel for its burning. Alexander burns through the world seeking it, but what he is looking for in the world has already left it: a broken Plato has already died.

I loved this book for many reasons growing up but I think first and foremost because it was one of the first books I had ever seen with an illustration of a black child on the front cover aimed at children around my age. It was also turned into a TV series and I remember realising at this point in my early teens that there are so many ways that a book can be interpreted. Not just in the minds of their readers but through different creative mediums and this really excited my imagination as I have been acting since I was small and very involved in many different forms of music. This made Whizziwig, a story about possibility at every turn as the subject matter is also about chancing upon an alien life form in your backyard with whom the protagonist becomes friends. Plus, it was the first… show more.

Station Eleven is another book that I’ve enjoyed re-reading, I think because of the depth of character and, again, the believability of their actions.

This time it’s a pandemic that does the damage, and the bulk of the action takes place twenty years later, when society has reached a kind of degraded normality. As in a couple of my other recommendations, there’s an encounter with a cult, showing how humanity might turn to the supernatural for answers. I also like that the story ends on a hopeful note!

This is probably the most challenging read here, but so worth the effort if you want to dive deep into one of the most unique artistic minds of our time. If you’re not a trained actor, you might not understand all of the nuances here – Mamet is a definite theater guy and doesn’t stop down to explain every detail here -- but any artist can learn Mamet’s biting, witty, shocking creative tips. I recommend just letting this one wash over you the first time, but if you give yourself to this text and to Mamet, it is sure to give you a new perspective on the way we all create art and hopefully inspire you to delve into some creative expression that you were always too scared to try. 

Noteworthy is a pitch-perfect novel set in the elite a capella group of a selective performing arts boarding school. Undistinguished Alto 2 Jordan Sun disguises herself as a guy to land a spot in the all-male Sharpshooters a capella group, only to realize she has to keep up the act for the remainder of her Junior and Senior years. Hijinks ensue as Jordan finds herself questioning her identity, her sexuality, and her place in the world. The writing in this book is crisp and funny, and I enjoyed learning a bit about how a capella works. Most of all, I enjoyed watching Jordan become more sure of herself even as her ruse starts to wear thin. This is a light-hearted read with some heavier discussions of race, class, gender, and sexuality deftly woven throughout. If you like voice-driven music books as much as I do, add Noteworthy to your list. 

I’m a big reader of memoirs… but I tend to steer clear of celebrity ones. I fell into this memoir written by a “Brat Packer” because the Camino is a dream of mine ---I read anything related. McCarthy does an excellent job at conveying this setting, towns and countryside alike.

Also, like the author, I grab opportunities to spend time with my sons, who are a similar age to Sam, his son. As the years go by, opportunities diminish…. stolen moments become more treasured. This aspect of the memoir was so poignant that I didn’t want it to end and dragged it out for the vicarious experience.

This compelling tale has inspired me to read this author’s earlier memoirs and also makes me still want to walk the Camino.

Set in a fantastical world based on the roaring 20s, Pennington’s take on the tale is very unique! Bastion and Dayo quickly became some of my favorite characters, and I loved all of the intrigue and mystery that surrounded them both. Not to mention the subtle African influences on the world!

Most people will know Bid Time Return from its Christopher Reeve film adaptation, Somewhere in Time. In the novel and movie, the main character is transported back and forth without a physical device, just through self-hypnosis. Some believe there is a touch of science to self-hypnosis. This story has spoken to me since I first saw the film as a young child. The story focuses more on the dynamics of the two characters, who are separated by an era, and less on the adventures of time travel. While this is more of a romance story at heart, I borrowed some atmosphere and tone from the love interest plotline for my own novel. To me, this story is timeless, and I knew my novel would suffer if I did not put a nod to it.

I adore the Auntie Lily character who has a penchant for telling silly stories. Each of these stories composed in clever rhymes feature a silly animal doing something outrageous. Children become interactive partners visualizing and acting out the hijinks like a stork riding on a subway train or a fly that works for the FBI. The fun continues because readers get ten riddles to solve at the end of the tale. This book is fun for the whole family from preschooler to grandma!

In this Toronto-set contemporary, baker Lindsay coaches actor Ryan to appear on a celebrity cooking show. Ryan’s mother has recently passed away, and while Lindsay’s father died years ago, she lives with the residual effects of that loss. The two connect over food, laughter, and grief. What I loved about this book was how Lau sensitively explores how grief isn’t an isolated feeling with a set end, but rather is a set of feelings and actions that can have ripples over the course of a person’s life.

This is cheating a little bit because it’s about a modern-day American boy who gets whisked back to Shakespeare’s time and befriends the playwright as a young man.

Our young actor has to figure out why he’s been sent back to this time and escape before a terrible plague wipes out much of London. I bought this book at the Globe Theatre gift shop (!) on an overseas trip on the basis of Susan Cooper’s name alone.

She wrote The Dark Is Rising Series and this is a thrilling modern classic by her. 

Breaking Character is a lesbian celebrity romance, but it’s also so much more than that. The main character, icy British actress Elizabeth, is in the closet for fear of risking her career. When she meets her younger colleague Summer, she starts letting someone close for the first time—and the result is a romance that is sizzling and sweet at the same time. 

If you like age-gap romances with a fake relationship and well-written characters, this is a great introduction to Lee Winter’s books.

I’m a huge fan of the board game Clue. The “present” timeline in this story provides an excellent tip of the hat when lead character Sadie, a bit actress, agrees to assume the role of “Miss Lamb” at an old mansion known as Raven Hall. She attends with a collection of others (who take on roles like Miss Mouse, Professor Owl, Colonel Otter, etc.) as part of a trial run for a business that hosts murder mystery parties. Great set-up, right?

Three time periods twine in the plot, one which includes a bizarre game of a different sort that has far-reaching consequences, stretching from past to present. The author does a brilliant job of foreshadowing, planting subtle clues that deliver staggering surprises by the end of the story.

Few characters in crime fiction are as charismatic as Charles Paris, a struggling actor whose career has more ups and downs than a seesaw. Simon Brett presents us with a fascinating character, a middle-aged man who is endearing even though he is a drunk and a womaniser. 

There is always a murder whether Paris is acting in weekly rep or has a cameo role in a film. So Much Blood involves Paris appearing at the world-famous Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Brett skilfully weaves in the drama of putting on a show and the dynamism of the Scottish city with Paris’ occasionally amateurish sleuthing as he tries to uncover who committed the crime. Excellent entertainment.