In Spite of Myself: A Memoir

By Christopher Plummer

Book Overview

A rollicking, rich portrait of a life. And what a life By one of our greatest actors.

Plummer tells how "this young bilingual wastrel, incurably romantic, spoiled rotten, tore himself away from the ski slopes to break into the big bad world of theatre, not from the streets up but from an Edwardian living room down," and writes of his early acting days as an eighteen-year-old playing the lead in Shakespeare's Cymbeline.

We see his glorious New York of the fifties, where life began at midnight, with the likes of Arthur Miller, Carson McCullers, Tennessee Williams, and Paddy Chayefsky, and how Plummer's own Broadway world developed and swept him along through the last Golden Age the American Theatre would ever remember . . . how the sublime Ruth Chatterton ("she might have been created by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Sinclair Lewis") introduced him to the right people in New York . . . how Miss Eva Le Gallienne gave Plummer his Broadway debut at twenty-five in The Starcross Story ("It opened and closed in one night One solitary night But what a night ").

He writes about his film career: The Sound of Music (affectionately dubbed "S&M") . . . Inside Daisy Clover, which brought him together with the beautiful Natalie Wood . . . John Huston's The Man Who Would Be King (Plummer was Rudyard Kipling). He tells the story of accepting Sir Laurence Olivier's invitation to join the National Theatre Company, playing in Amphytron directed by Olivier himself ("a great actor but lousy director"), and writes about falling deeply in love with and eventually marrying a young actress and dancer, Elaine Taylor--to this day, his "one true strength."

Seamlessly written, with stories that make us laugh out loud and that make real the fascinating, complex, exuberant adventure that is the actor's (at least this actor's) life.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679421629
• ISBN13: 9780679421627
• Release Date: November 2008
• Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
• Length: 656 Pages
• Weight: 2.37 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.6" x 6.5" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

In Chris' sake

Well, I want to translate the book into Russian because it's so witty, so colourful, so bright...

A crackling good autobiography

What a writer he is. You really live the periods he writes about. You share is views and life style. What you thought was going on from 1940 in the theater and film is not what was going on. What an amazing period of time he lived in. A perfectly candid story of his life. You will be hard put to stop reading this book.

A terrific, literate and mesmerizing memoir

Mr. Plummer is a splendid writer who takes pains to reveal himself candidly and honestly, warts and all. For anyone interested in theatre in the last half of the 20th century, this is required reading. Though admirably frank about his own failings and failures, he retains a gentleman's charity when discussing others. About his various liaisons, he remains fairly discreet throughout. There is much to learn and even more to enjoy in this absorbing and beautifully written book.

Brilliant, intelligent, generous, perceptive,revealing Biography of a Great Theatre Artist

The true odyssey of the development of a great theatre artist recounting a life in the arts of nearly 80 years. Honest about his appraisal of himself, kind to his colleagues, and indispensible if you would know what the world of theatre is really like. Fascinating and revealing. Every actor, would be actor, and theatre lover should read it.

I used to like this guy . . .

The good/bad thing about autobiographies is that they reveal the character of the author. I did and do admire Christopher Plummer's talent as an actor--but not as much as he does. Unfortunately, by his own words, Plummer does not come across as a very nice person; rather, he is arrogant and opportunistic. He spends so much time describing his sexual conquests, one wonders when he found time to appear vertically on stage and screen. His wives get short shrift in his book, as they did in his life. Obviously everyone who has crossed his path knew he was an SOB; now the rest of the world knows.