Product Description
In this compulsively readable and constantly surprising book, Peter Biskind, the author of the film classics Easy Riders, Raging Bulls and Down and Dirty Pictures, writes the most intimate, revealing, and balanced biography ever of Hollywood legend Warren Beatty.

Famously a playboy, Beatty has also been one of the most ambitious and successful stars in Hollywood. Several Beatty films have passed the test of time, from Bonnie and Clyde (which confirmed for him the importance of controlling the projects he was involved in) to Shampoo, Heaven Can Wait, Reds (for which he won the best director Oscar), Bugsy, and Bulworth. Few filmgoers realize that along with Orson Welles, Beatty is the only person ever nominated for four Academy Awards for a single film -- and unlike Welles, Beatty did it twice, with Heaven Can Wait and Reds. Biskind shows how Beatty used star power, commercial success, savvy, and charm to bend Hollywood moguls to his will, establishing an unprecedented level of independence while still working within the studio system.

Beatty's private life has been the subject of gossip for decades, and Star confirms his status as Hollywood's leading man in the bedroom, describing his affairs with Joan Collins, Natalie Wood, Leslie Caron, Julie Christie, Michelle Phillips, Diane Keaton, and Madonna, among many others.

Throughout his career, Beatty has demonstrated a fascination for politics. He was influential in the 1984 and 1988 presidential campaigns of Gary Hart. It was said of Hart and Beatty that each wanted to be the other, and Biskind shows that there was considerable truth in that wry observation. As recently as a few years ago, Beatty was speaking out about California politics and contemplating a run for governor.

Biskind explains how Beatty exercised unique control, often hiring screenwriters out of his own pocket (and frequently collaborating with them), producing, directing, and acting in his own films, becoming an auteur before anyone in Hollywood knew what the word meant. He was arguably one of the most successful and creative figures in Hollywood during the second half of the twentieth century, and in this fascinating biography, Warren Beatty comes to life -- complete with excesses and achievements -- as never before. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (25)

What Price Stardom?
Peter Biskind always delivers the inside information on Hollywood, particularly the stars of the 70s, and STAR is no exception as he looks at the enigmatic figure of Warren Beatty. On the one hand, all agree that Beatty was petty, cheap, sex-obsessed, vain the the nth degree, and uttterly manipulative. On the other hand, he listens, reads, generously visits when friends are ill and has a passion for getting something right. Biskind emphasizes the negative about 80% of the time and the positive about 20% because that's how Beatty is in real life. The best aspect of the book, however, is the interaction of Beatty's personal life with his professional life in the making of SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS, BONNIE AND CLYDE, McCABE AND MRS. MILLER, SHAMPOO, HEAVEN CAN WAIT, ISHTAR, DICK TRACY, BUGSY, and BULSWORTH. Relationships with Joan Collins, Natalie Wood, Leslie Caron, Julie Christie, Diane Keaton, Madonna, and finally Annette Benning match the making of almost movie above.

At the end, I was close to loathing Beatty, but actually I found myself pitying him for living such a empty, self-gratifying life. But, apparently, that is the conclusion that nearly everyone associated with him comes to over time. That being the case, Biskind has proven his worth once more--despite what might be an all-time record use of four letter words in seemingly every paragraph--as the reigning king of Hollywood biographers.

He said...she said....who cares!
This is an overlong and extremely boring book about a narcissistic, egotistical person who we are supposed to greatly admire because he managed to pull off a few good movies in his 40 years of acting. The book is mostly dialogue about the making of each movie Beatty was involved in and and goes on and on in excruciating detail about every conversation that might have ever happened between everyone involved. How could there be a book about Beatty without some juicy scandals, some slightly interesting details about what actually made him famous - his bedding of every woman who crossed his path. It's pretty clear that Biskind was so delighted Beatty deigned to allow the book be written that he tried to make Beatty look like some kind of misunderstood genius. However, by the time I trudged through the 600 pages all I felt for Beatty was disgust at his self-absorption and his mistreatment of those who mistakenly thought they were his friends!

STAR .How Warren Beatty Seduced America
I am not even half way through... Very interesting and you get HOURS more than any other CD book I have purchased...and I love them so I buy a lot of them.I am delighted with this purchase...can't wait to get to the next CD!!

Great Deal!
Great book about a living icon. The book arrived quickly and in perfect condition and at a price much much less than the publishers listed price. That makes me happy!

Absolutely boring book!...YAWN!!!!
I decided to buy this book after reading a review in the British magazine, "The Week" and I truly regret having bought the most boring book I have read in a long time.I kid thee not!! I find it hard to believe that it got such raving reviews.It took all the strength I had to plough through this dribble, more often than not my attention would be distracted by more interesting things, like the grass growing in my front lawn. I truly believe that Warren Beatty is a fascinating man but this does not come through in this most boring tome.

This book does NOT give you any insight into Warren Beatty's personal life nor his family. Pages and pages are filled with his movie negotiations....oh, please, someone hand me a strong cup of coffee, just remembering this is making me sleepy!! I wish this had been written by someone like Lee Server ("Ava Gardner: Love is Nothing", and "Robert Mitchum: Baby I don't care"), both captivating and very interesting biographies.

After reading this, may I suggest that from now on the author stick to writing such titillating articles like forecasting the weather in Timbuctoo! ... Read more

Product Description
“Whatever you have read or heard about me through articles or gossip, forget it. I am nothing like that Warren Beatty. I am nothing like what you have read.” —Warren Beatty

Stunningly researched, engrossing, and exquisitely detailed, Warren Beatty: A Private Man gives us a new understanding of the enigmatic, fiercely intelligent star who embodies the American dream. Weaving together hundreds of candid interviews, photographs from private albums, personal letters, and diaries, lauded biographer Suzanne Finstad unveils the real Beatty and constructs the definitive, myth-shattering account of his evolution from Hollywood’s enfant terrible to film legend.Amazon.com Review
Amazon.com Exclusive: Joe Laitin and Warren Beatty Excerpted Interview
Excerpt and photographs courtesy of the author, Suzanne Finstad, by permission of Peter Laitin.

Beatty with Joe Laitin

JL: There apparently aren't that many people who really know you anyway. I don't know whether you deliberately keep people at arm's length. I suppose you do...

WB: I am finding more and more that it's really very hard to please a lot of people. And I would say it's impossible. And so I have been allowing that need to try to please a lot of people to slip away from me in the past couple of years. So that I realize now that there will be a lot of people that dislike me just on principle, there will be a lot of people that will resent me, there will be a lot of people that will like me, and there'll be an awful lot of people that just don't really care one way or the other. So if I allowed myself to be upset by that, then I'd be a pretty upset person.

So I've got to just enjoy my own work. My business is not exploitation and my business is not selling pictures. My business is not figuring out good angles for press and so forth. My business, or my work, is acting right now. And once I forget about that, I'm gonna be a boring actor and I'm not gonna have any fun at it. And that's why I hire people to do--that's why I have an agent, that's why I have somebody who's a press representative, and that's why I have a business manager. Because I don't want to think about those things. And I find that if I try to think about them, I don't do it well. All I know is when I'm enjoying my work in acting and when I'm not, when I think I'm doing well and when I don't.

It's like the more attention that is brought to you, the more obstacles that are put in your path, just doing an honest day's work creatively. There are more obstacles.

With sister Shirley Maclaine

It's nice to have a guy from Time magazine want to come and talk to you on the set. On the other hand, he wouldn't want to come and talk to you if you were doing a play off-Broadway somewhere, and maybe you would be able to concentrate a little better. And if he comes onto the set, you've gotta either be polite to him and acknowledge his presence and talk to him, or you have to forget about him--if he tries to talk to you, ignore him and just think about your work.In which case, he's gonna think you're a nut, or that you're trying to be rude to him or offend him in some way. And that's why, when a lot of strangers come on the set, I usually go to my dressing room or something. But there can be an awful lot of those obstacles, and those obstacles, I think they can just eat you up.
JL: Are these quotes of yours and Shirley's [Maclaine] in print without any direct communication between you, is that widening whatever breach there is between you, Warren?

WB: Not on my part, it certainly isn't, and I don't feel that there's a specific breach between us. And I'm sure that she feels the same way...

JL: Now this is the only part that I'm really interested in, because if you don't really want to communicate with her, I'm very curious to know why. It may explain a part of your character that I don't know anything about.

WB: Well, I don't blame you for being curious, but that doesn't mean that I've got to, you know, go into my sister.

Customer Reviews (9)

Fascinating book, fascinating man
Everything a great bio needs - a compelling subject, exhaustive research, good storytelling - is here.There are flaws, but they are largely outweighed in this excellent book that really made me think.

True, it's a bit repetitive at times, and like so many chronological works, falls into the trap of being front-loaded.The biggest casualty here is Bening - a woman worth a more thorough treatment in the book in the context of what the relationship says about Beatty.

In the end, I disagree with two of the author's main themes (one of the best things about this book is that it's thought provoking):first that Beatty was driven by a fear of failure.I simply can't believe that a man who has failed so spectacularly and so publicly so many times, in his relationships, his business ventures and his political causes, is afraid to fail.In fact, I think it's quite the opposite.

I also don't think Beatty is any more "private" than most of us, and what appear to be the characteristics of a private person are in fact clues into what makes him so successful.Being elusive with the media is not necessarily about privacy - in fact I was surprised at the number of very personal statements cited from media interviews over the years - it's about control.

He does what the most seductive people do so well - he makes every person he encounters, professional or personal, feel like they are special, a theme repeated throughout the book by the many people who have known him.His self-created image only furthers the seduction, as everyone he touches flatters themselves that "he's a very private man; I know him better than you do."

He even achieves this illusion at a very public level by presenting a series of autobiographical films - leaving each person to decide if he's George Roundy or Jay Bulworth or John Reed or Bud Stamper or Joe Pendleton or Dick Tracy, or some complicated combination of all of them.That's not a private man - that's a man who knows how to manipulate his own image, and to get what he wants out of life in the long run, both personally and professionally.

Loved the book, really made me think, will now read others by the same author on this basis.

Could be better!!!
Gets really boring at times.Jumps all over the place and keeps on repeating.........But otherwise informative.

Warren Beatty: A Private Man
Is an objective look, at the man who captivated audiences around the world. Beautifully written, honest and poignant, the book takes the reader deep into the lives and backgrounds of a family that spawned not only one star-but Two.Suzanne Finstad's "A Private Man" gives the reader perspective as it takes you through the inner workings of a boy's life as he grows up to be one of Hollywood's most charismatic and influential leading men. Gracefully structured and truly the definitive Warren Beatty biography...A Must Read! J.J. Gillock (Easy Company Productions)

Smells like Honey
It took me days to finish this book, and I'd say you get your money's worth by halfway through, and the rest is gravy.Oddly enough, however, the book feels a bit topheavy, so that the bulk of it is spent on Beatty's difficult period between meeting William Inge and making LILITH about four years later, and then all of a sudden the last 40 years are rushed through at a clippety clop.

WB isn't quite as entertaining as Suzanne Finstad's previous biorgaphy, the sublime NATASHA, which really did bring Natalie Wood alive again for her fans; and it's likely that the parts of the present book with the most emotional resonance are the years Beatty spent with Natalie, trying to cheer her up after Wagner betrayed her.Finstad does an admirable job of showing us the psychological underpinnings of Beatty's affairs with Joan Collins (almost persuading us that Collins is a real person, not just a glitzy British sex bomb--almost, but not quite), Natalie Wood, Leslie Caron, and Julie Christie.But when she gets down the list to Michelle Phillips, her pretense at analysis ends.She doesn't even try.I wonder if the book wasn't originally twice as long, and she was asked to curtail the later years into a series of briefer chapters.I mean, she could have written 100s of pages on Mary Tyler Moore and Isabelle Adjani, but instead they're reduced to ciphers.

As a boy, Beatty was enraptured by the original cast album of OKLAHOMA! by Rodgers and Hammerstein and Finstad successfully shows us that, subconsciously or not, Beatty succeeded again and again in replicating the Curly-Laurie romance in his own adult life.

It does seem as though Beatty was propelled to stardom by a clutch of gay visionaries including Inge and Tennessee Williams, and crypto gay figures like Joshua Logan, who signed Beatty to a personal contract and had him screen tested kissing Jane Fonda from morning to night.Inge wrote not only SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS, but A LOSS OF ROSES and ALL FALL DOWN for Beatty, and apparently never asked him for a thing in return.The stage production of A LOSS OF ROSES turned out to be a true nightmare of conflicted egos and desperate desires, what with Barbara Baxley threatening to jump off the cliffs of Malibu if replaced by Carol Haney, and Shirley Booth quitting on opening night.Joey Heatherton, the one and only, was also fired, thus setting the scene for a long and poignant second act that never quite came.

Would Joan Collins have been effective in the movie version of DH Lawrence's SONS AND LOVERS?Would Warren have succeeded playing Tony in WEST SIDE STORY?The book gives us crazy dreams of movies that might have been.Afdera Fonda, the former wife of Henry Fonda who dallied with Beatty briefly in 1963, said that he was "naughty, charming and playful.He smelled like honey, and he came and went like a shadow in the night."

"A biography reader"
I love and collect biographical books.This book was totally disappointing.The entire book was an effort to "elect" Warren to some future office.I had hoped to gain some insight to his personal life and was left entirely with mindless minutiae.A total disappointment for such a large book...little or no new information of any value. ... Read more

Product Description
A vivid portrait of enigmatic screen legend Warren Beatty draws on interviews with friends and associates to probe behind the self-created myths of the great playboy to reveal the more subtle, mysterious, and powerful man beneath. ... Read more

Product Description
"Do you believe in heaven? People say every person's heaven is different depending on what they wanted in life."

"Well, somehow I doubt God has prepared for me the world's largest whorehouse with free liquor and continuous showings of Three Stooges movies."

Such is conversation between Heather Davies and Garret Roark, lead actress and producer respectively of Melrose Hills, once the country's highest rated teen television drama, now reduced to almost certain cancellation, as they walk along a Malibu beach film set. Five minutes later the snowy sand is stained with her blood after she is shot in front of a nationwide audience during a live broadcast of the show.

Six Degrees of Warren Beatty is the story of Garret and his cast of young misfits and how their struggle to save the show became the darkest of the many black comedies written about Hollywood. Leading the charge is Hillary Davies, mother of the lead actress. The King Kong of Hollywood moms, Hillary has dedicated her life to making her hellion actress daughter a movie star and she's not about to let this bump in the road stop her. She conceives a plan, marrying the current "reality show" sensibility with the old "who shot J.R." cliffhanger drama, but needs Garret's cooperation to push it through. Seeing no alternatives, he reluctantly agrees, setting into motion a cycle of desperation and depravity bizarre even by Hollywood standards.

Product Description
The Sexiest Man Alive is the first in-depth biography of Warren Beatty, a man who blazed a trail of sex and high artistic achievement across the twentieth century as Hollywood matinee idol, founder of the New Hollywood with his groundbreaking Bonnie and Clyde, and international Don Juan.Through interviews with friends and associates, Ellis Amburn reveals new details about Beatty's well-known conquests and tells of many others that have not heretofore been reported, from early affairs with Joan Collins and Natalie Wood to encounters with such unknowns as a Playboy bunny and a young black student to such recent romances with Madonna and Annette Bening, the woman he finally married.

Customer Reviews (12)

All Sex No Substance
Rather than focus on the films Beatty has made over his fifty plus year career author Ellis Amburn chooses to focus on the women Warren has bedded. We're talking literal paragraphs of nothing but the names of Beatty's conquests. I only wish that that in-depth analysis extended to the actual films. I picked the book up hoping to learn more about the Beatty masterpiece 'Bugsy' but all I got was a page and a half of info. Even then it was mostly about how Beatty fell for co-star Annette Bening, married her and started a family. (Amburn claims this ended Bening's career yet she has gone on to be nominated for both Golden Globes and Oscars). The only film that gets more than a few paragraphs is 'Bonnie and Clyde', which Amburn is quick to point out signaled a new era in Hollywood. Many important figures from this revolution like Jack Nicholson, Robert Towne, Roman Polanski and Robert Evans are mentioned but again it's mostly about how these guys slept with the same women and went cruising together. The book barely covers 'Reds' but instead mentions sex comedies like 'Shampoo' and 'Town and Country', uneven efforts like 'Heaven Can Wait' and 'Bulworth' and even Beatty's biggest bomb 'Ishtar'. The fact is that even though Warren's filmography isn't as long as peers like Nicholson or Dustin Hoffman, nearly every film he has had a hand in creatively has been consecutively nominated for Oscars in the categories of Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Actor. These are major accomplishments but obviously Amburn is more impressed by the fact that Warren has slept with some of the most desirable women in Hollywood. The book was informative when it came to Beatty's upbringing. It does a good job of exploring the repressed environment he was raised in and how that led to a sibling rivalry between Warren and big sister Shirley MaClaine. Amburn details how Beatty broke up more than a few marriages only to leave the women in severe emotional distress over his inability to commit. Finally, he wraps the book up detailing Beatty's other lifelong obsession: politics. It's an okay read but hardly an informative biography of "The Great Seducer" as film historian Richard Schickel calls him.

Couldn't put it down......
I enjoyed this book so much I carried it around with me for any chances I got to read it.I liked Amburn's style of writing and plan to read his other works.

Is this a book?
There's not a single thing in this book that digs even remotely into Warren Beatty's talent and gumption that have made him not one of the world's best actor but one of the greatest PRODUCERS the movies have ever seen.BONNIE & CLYDE, SHAMPOO, BUGSY, and REDS are landmarks.Instead, the book is about his sex life. Which, at this late date, is ancient history!Author Ellis Amburn spends plenty of time quoting vaguely identified "sources" and credits his research to time spent around famous people (from Shelley Winters to Christopher Isherwood).A badly written, name dropping collection of junk.

I guess i'm the only reviewer who read his other bios...
...because this one is better than most of them. There is more info on Beatty here than in any other bio (and photos i haven't seen anywhere else). I should complain that there are hundreds of quotes from other books and articles etc.? Um, no. I don't care where the info came from. The fact is, it's here, in this biography, where it belongs. If you have a problem with Beatty as a person, don't read a bio of him.

Little Acting Ability, Minimal Personality, Morals Of A Jackrabbit..
So characterizes Warren Beatty, if one interprets this excessively detailed exploration of his life. Beatty's sexual exploits ad infinitum, and those of his fellow Hollywood comrades, male and female, should be enough for anyone to rip out their cable, never watch TV or go to a movie again, and retreat into the cultured world of literature. The shallowness of the last 50 years of movie celebrity is appalling, and continues today. I expected a tad more in-depth analysis and less randy ramblings, so although the book was well-detailed with the most minute information, that doesn't mean it was well done or as meaningful as it could have been. It did, however, verify my long-held opinion that Beatty's 'talent' was horribly overrated, and I never could figure out the mystique. I bought the book hoping to find a clue, but was disappointed. Perhaps it's simply the subject that is ultimately disappointing, and no amount of literary talent or research could hide that... ... Read more

Product Description
Sellers, in his follow-up to the acclaimed Hellraisers, traces the intertwining lives and careers of four outrageous Hollywood movie mavericks.

“I don’t know what people expect when they meet me. They seem to be afraid that I’m going to piss in the potted palm and slap them on the ass.” Marlon Brando

“I should have been dead ten times over. I believe in miracles. It’s an absolute miracle that I’m still around.” Dennis Hopper

“You only lie to two people in your life: Your girlfriend and the police.” Jack Nicholson

“The best time to get married is noon. That way, if things don’t work out, you haven’t blown the whole day.” Warren Beatty


They’re the baddest bad asses Hollywood has ever seen. They are the men for whom rules did not apply, men for whom normal standards of behaviour were simply too wearisome to worry about. Bad Boy Drive is a whistle-stop tour of jaw-dropping sexual activity, misbehaviour of an Olympic standard, all-out excess and genuine madness. It’s a wonder Hollywood survived.


From the Trade Paperback edition. ... Read more

Product Description
In his follow-up to the acclaimed Hellraisers, Sellers traces the intertwining lives and careers of four outrageous Hollywood movie mavericks.“I don’t know what people expect when they meet me. They seem to be afraid that I’m going to piss in the potted palm and slap them on the ass.”—Marlon Brando
“I should have been dead ten times over. I believe in miracles. It’s an absolute miracle that I’m still around.”—Dennis Hopper
“You only lie to two people in your life: your girlfriend and the police.”—Jack Nicholson
“The best time to get married is noon. That way, if things don’t work out, you haven’t blown the whole day.”—Warren Beatty

They’re the baddest bad-asses Hollywood as ever seen: Marlon Brando, Dennis Hopper, Warren Beatty, and Jack Nicholson. They are men to whom rules did not apply; normal standards of behavior were simply too wearisome to worry about. These are men who brawled, boozed, snorted, and screwed their way into legendhood—but along the way they changed acting and the way movies were made forever. Hollywood Hellraisers is a whistle-stop tour of jaw-dropping sexual activity, misbehavior of an Olympic standard, all-out excess, and genuine madness. It’s a wonder Hollywood survived. 24 black-and-white photographs ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

doubtful accuracy
This looked like a fun read and I enjoyed it for a while. However, the author includes many stories which are apocryphal at best and quite often out and out fiction, such as his claim that Hedy Lamarr had liaisons with Hitler and Mussolini. Can't recommend a nonfiction book which veers so far towards fiction

Any library strong in Hollywood personalities will find this inviting
HOLLYWOOD HELLRAISERS: THE WILD LIVES AND FAST TIMES OF MARLON BRANDO, DENNIS HOPPER, WARREN BEATTY, AND JACK NICHOLSON provides a fine biographical coverage of four of Hollywood's baddest boys, describing the lively adventures of Hollywood celebrities whose misdeeds were legendary. Their personal lives were ribald and dangerous - but in their professional worlds they succeeded in changing acting and how movies were made. Any library strong in Hollywood personalities will find this inviting.

Another Look At Bad Boys Hollywood Style
First off, this book and its predecessor were rec'd via a friend who I swap books with. I don't think I would have purchased either. Like HELLRAISERS, this book supposedly takes on legendary Hollywood bad boys known as much for their lifestyles as their movie work. Part of the premise is that these fellas are notorious rascals who wallow in general bad living. No doubt about it, none of them are/were angels. However, I'm not sure they are worthy of a book that is dedicated largely to their slimey behavior. Like the first book, there is biographical information coupled with anecdotes supporting the book's basic premise. While interesting, the sameness of the stories actually got boring after a while. Objectively, I probably should not have read both books in rapid succession becausde my general enthusiasm was waning after the first book. Taking this into account, this is an interesting book and worth a look if you like these fly-on-the-wall escapades. However, if you are interested in Jack Nicholson, Marlon Brando, Dennis Hopper, or Warren Beatty, you'd probably be better off reading individual biographies which might be more enlightening. This book o.k., but it got boring fast.

Life, Love and Inebriation
Robert Sellers turns his examination of bad behavior from England's bad boys to Hollywood's. They are Marlon Brando, Dennis Hopper, Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson. They all have lived lives of excess, in money, and women. Beatty seems to have spurned the drug and alcohol route, but the three others certainly didn't and all of those stories are told in the 7 chapters of this book. Each man is covered in recounting their early life, how they arrived in Hollywood, the 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, and 90's. Brando's death is dealt with, but this book was written before Hopper's death.
Each man showed signs of bad behavior at a very young age, Brando had to be led to kindergarten on a leash so that he would not run away. Dennis snorted gasoline on his grandparent's farm before he was 10. Warren set off fire alarms and dumped neighbor's trash on their lawns. Jack misbehaved so much in school he had to stay after every day. They all escalated from those younger years.
Their `missions' in life are covered; Brando's many causes, Beatty's politics, Hopper's involvement taking pictures at Civil Rights marches, Jack and Dennis' art collections.Some of their friendships will surprise you; such as Marlon's deep abiding one with Wally Cox.

Their acting talent is undeniable, but the stories of their actions on set makes one wonder how great they were that directors and other actors would put up with their deeds. You want to laugh and enjoy this behavior, but cringe at the same time of page after page of out of control living. You'll wonder most of all how they got away with it.

There is really no depth into their personal thoughts and many of the stories have been previously published in biographies other and sources.By the end of this reading their bad behavior overwhelms any thoughts of their acting abilities. That anyone would work with them is still a marvel left unexplained, except we are told that they are magnificent actors. ... Read more

Product Description
Chapters: Steven Spielberg, Clint Eastwood, Miloš Forman, Warren Beatty, Kon Ichikawa, Abbas Kiarostami, Satyajit Ray, Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Larry Peerce, Arturo Ripstein. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 159. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Clinton Elias "Clint" Eastwood, Jr. (born May 31, 1930) is an American film actor, director, producer, and composer. He has received five Academy Awards, five Golden Globe Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award, and five People's Choice Awards including one for Favorite All-Time Motion Picture Star. Eastwood is known for his anti-hero acting roles in violent action and western films. Following his role as a cast member of the TV series Rawhide starting in 1958, he went on to star as the Man With No Name in the Dollars trilogy of Spaghetti Westerns in the 1960s and as Inspector Harry Callahan in the Dirty Harry films of the 1970s and 1980s. These roles have made him an enduring icon of masculinity. Eastwood is also known for his comedic efforts in Every Which Way but Loose and Any Which Way You Can, his two highest-grossing films after adjustment for inflation. For his work in the films Unforgiven (1992) and Million Dollar Baby (2004), Eastwood won Academy Awards for Best Director and for producer of the Best Picture and received nominations for Best Actor. These films in particular, as well as others such as Play Misty for Me (1971), The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), Escape from Alcatraz (1979), Pale Rider (1985), In the Line of Fire (1993), and Gran Torino (2008), have all received great critical acclaim and commercial success. He has directed most of his star vehicles as well as films he has not acted in, such as Mystic River (2003) and Letters from Iwo Jima (2006), for which he received Academy Award nominations. He also served as the ...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=43373 ... Read more