The most recommended books about movie stars

First of all, Nia Vardalos is just hilarious. She could write an Ikea assembly brochure and it would probably be side-splitting. But in the book, she tells about being a rising star (a great story on its own) who had it all – except a baby. After a grueling battle with infertility, she eventually came around to the idea of adoption, and started to learn more about the fost-adopt process of taking an older child who is unlikely to reunite with their original family. With great heart, she tells the roller-coaster story of bringing a 3-year-old with attachment challenges into her life—and the inevitable universality of motherhood. “Nothing prepared me for the life I would feel for my child. Nothing prepared me for how quickly it happened for me. And here’s what I just figure out now: no one is ever prepared. In a way, we’re all instant moms.” She’s… show more.

Martin Turnbull is somewhat of an expert on Old Hollywood and I found his incredible website in my research for Honey Black.

His website is full of original photos of LA throughout the decades and these were invaluable for me when I was writing certain scenes. I then discovered he had written a series of books based in Hollywood, following three friends who come together to navigate their way through the movie business, starting with The Garden of Allah set in the late 1920s. It’s a fascinating look at the seedier side of Old Hollywood. 

Matthew McConaughey, the globally recognized actor shares his life story and provides many valuable lessons learned along the way that all of us can apply to our own lives.

Most inspiring for today’s Gen Z students and those who may be stuck in their careers is his storytelling about his pursuit of acting and his failures and successes that empowered him to consistently innovate and transform.  

Ace Atkins has written a number of excellent historical crime novels based on true stories, and Devil’s Garden is my favorite of the bunch. 

The 1921 murder trial of Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle created headlines around the world, and Devil’s Garden illustrates the fall from grace of one of Hollywood’s biggest stars. Atkins brings to life Prohibition-era Hollywood, real-life Pinkerton operative Dashiell Hammett who investigates the murder, William Randolph Hearst, actress Marion Davies, and a large cast of grifters, B-girls, politicians, and hangers-on revolving around Fatty’s trial for the murder of actress Virginia Rappe.

I decided to read this book as research for my latest YA novel. I was curious how Walter managed different timelines. Little did I know how engrossed I would become by this sweeping story of love and old Hollywood?

I was gripped by the characters and surprised by the turns in the plot. I found myself hoping for a very specific ending, which I usually try not to do as that’s the author’s job.

One storyline takes place during the production of the ill-fated Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton epic Cleopatra, and that’s all I needed to keep reading. Yet, it was the relationship between the two main characters that hooked me and made me restless, thinking about when I could continue reading.  

In 2021, actor and writer Richard E. Grant lost his wife to lung cancer.

A Pocketful of Happiness is his heartbreaking memoir of the journey from her diagnosis to her funeral. Like most people, my life has been touched by cancer and I’m all too aware of the emotional turmoil that both patients and their loved ones go through. Grant openly shares the highs and lows as his wife faces a diagnosis that can only end one way. His honest insights reflect his feelings of helplessness and disbelief, with flashbacks to happier times throughout their 38-year love story.

Her final wish, that he try to find “a pocketful of happiness in every day,” has become his mission, and I am following this new part of his journey on Instagram.

As someone who adores all things Pickford (and has written about Mary’s sister-in-law, Olive Thomas), there’s no way I couldn’t include this book, which covers the association between silent star Mary Pickford and her scenarist Frances Marion. 

I love the dynamic between these two powerful women, and Benjamin does a good job of establishing their relationship. There is a lot to love about this book: the writing, the dialog, and the detail. I love this book!

My only quibble is the picture they used for the front cover. I’d have picked it up long before I did if they’d actually used a picture of Mary and Frances because I would have recognized instantly who it was about.  

Great Circle revolves around two women I found fascinatingly complex—twentieth-century aviator Marian Graves, bent on circling the globe via the poles, and twenty-first-century actor Hadley Baxter, who struggles to capture the ineffable Marian in a Hollywood biopic.

I was blown away by the geographical and historical scope of Shipstead’s book, darting from Glasgow to Missoula, London to Alaska, from the opening of the American West through the days of Prohibition and the Second World War to contemporary Hollywood.

The cast of characters is equally huge, deftly developed, often eccentric, always interesting. For sheer societal scope, I was reminded of James Michener, but the intensity and focus of the drama are more like Melville’s in Moby Dick.

Better to say that Great Circle deserves to sit on the same shelf as another book of female adventurers I hold in awe, Sena Jeter Naslund’s remarkable Ahab’s Wife.

Rebecca Prime is one of the contributors to my book and her book is a fascinating sequel to that volume. It covers the careers of several blacklisted filmmakers who fled Hollywood and America, seeking to find new work and life opportunities in Europe. Impeccably researched and elegantly written, Prime’s study tells the story of a generation of creative workers that was lost to the USA but which made a vital contribution to European and British cinemas. As she details, many of the exiled filmmakers faced almighty personal and professional struggles to adjust to their new circumstances, and while a few (e.g. Joseph Losey and Jules Dassin) would eventually achieve fabulous success, many other exiles found it difficult to secure regular and fulfilling work opportunities or personal happiness.

Jane Fonda’s autobiography surprised me more than perhaps any other book I have ever read or listened to.

Fonda has worked impressively hard to acquire the life wisdom that she shares so generously and goodhumoredly with the reader, and hearing one of the great actresses of our time tell her own story makes this audiobook as exquisitely pleasurable as a Broadway opening night.

The epigrams at the start of each chapter alone are invaluable, and the Hollywood stories are inherently fascinating, but what I loved most about My Life So Far was what I learned about myself. I came away from this book acutely and poignantly aware of the importance in life of fostering inner transformation in the way that Fonda has. I am simply a better human being for having listened to this incredible book.