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Patricia Neal: An Unquiet Life is the first critical biography
detailing this famous actress's impressive film career. Stephen Michael Shearer's
approach incorporates both biography and cinematic study. Shearer has conducted
numerous interviews with Neal and with her colleagues and friends, and the
result is an honest and comprehensive portrait of an accomplished woman who has
lived her life with determination and bravado.
With her commanding presence, legendary actress Patricia Neal anchored such
classic movies as The Day the Earth Stood Still, A Face in the Crowd,
and Breakfast at Tiffany's. She is perhaps most well known for her
crowning acting achievement: her performance as Alma in Hud, which earned her
the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1963.
Neal grew up in Packard, Kentucky, and began acting as a teenager. Her career
soared after moving to New York, where she performed in several Broadway plays,
winning a Tony Award for Lillian Hellman's Another Part of the Forest.
She was then courted by Hollywood, and after being cast in The
Fountainhead, Neal quickly became regarded as one of the most promising
actresses of the era. In 1965, several years after marrying famed children's
author Roald Dahl, Neal suffered a severe and debilitating stroke, after which
Variety mistakenly reported that she had died. After a difficult
recovery, Neal returned to film acting, earning a second Academy Award
nomination, and appeared in a number of television movie roles in the 1970s and
1980s. In 1986, Neal received the Women's International Center Living Legacy
Award.
Stephen Michael Shearer, who has worked as a professional actor, has written
for The Film Collectors Registry and contributed research to the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.
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| Reviews:
"This impressively
researched biography of film actress Patricia Neal covers an immensity
of material."--(Salt Lake City) Deseret Morning News
"Her life has had so many tragic twists it makes for compelling
reading."--Variety
"Digs into the amazing first 80 years in the life of one of our national
treasures. . . . Neal is still a great force of nature, and Shearer's book
documents all her ups, downs, traumas and triumphs."--Reuters, Washington Post,
St. Paul (MN) Pioneer Press, Hollywood Reporter
"Shearer delivers an inspiring look at the professional triumphs and personal
tragedies that define one of Hollywood's legendary stars."--Des Moines (IA)
Sunday Register
"Patricial Neal has traveled the road from tirumph to despair in ways few of us can imagine. There is sincerity and dedication behind this work--it's vibrant and accomplished."--Paul Newman
"One of the best [of the new showbiz biographies]is Patricia Neal: An Unquiet Life which digs into the amazing first 80 years in the life of one of our national treasures."--Robert Osborne, Reuters
"Screen legend Neal's life was filled with tragedies and triumphs, and Shearer unveils
an impressive portrait of the actress. . . . Readers of As I Am, Neal's 1988 memoir, will seek out this
biography for more of the actress's absorbing and inspirational
story."--Publishers Weekly
"A solid biography."--Washington Post Book World
"No writer, except maybe one of the Greeks, could have made up a story as dramatic and rich as the one Patricia Neal has lived for real. No one deserves a thoughtful biography more, since mixed in with her Greek-sized tragedies and tangles with fate, there are myriad lessons to be learned from the way she's coped and lived her life with such a positive flair. Nor does it hurt that sprinkled in her story is a torrid romance with a famous star, a high-profile divorce from a celebrated writer, her own Academy Award acclaim, and a working life during Hollywood's golden era which has encompassed such names as Cooper, Reagan, Kazan, Wayne, Garfield, a Douglas (as in Kirk) and a Hepburn (as in Audrey)."--Robert Osborne, author of 75 Years of the Oscar: The Offical History of the Academy Awards
"The time is right for a thorough and respectful biography of this superb actress, whose life off-screen has been just as dramatic as any screenplay Hollywood could concoct."--Leonard Maltin, author of Leonard Maltin's Classic Movie Guide
"A rich record of a life, and of the times and places in which that life was lived."--Toronto Globe and Mail
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