Tales from an Actor's Life - Hardcover

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 Salome 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.

Steven Berkoff's plays and adaptations have been performed in many countries and in many languages. Among the adaptations Berkoff has created for the stage, directed and toured, are Kafka's Metamorphosis and The Trial, Agamemnon after Aeschylus, and Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher. He has directed and toured productions of Shakespeare's Coriolanus also playing the title role, Richard II, Hamlet and Macbeth, as well as Oscar Wilde's Salome.