A Difficult Actor

Charles Laughton

A definitive biography of one of the twentieth century's finest actors and directors, written with great insight and verve by Simon Callow, &amp; reissued here with a new preface.

Remarkable...extraordinarily well written, perceptive and rivetingly sympathetic

Simon Callow is a writer - and a very good one too. Few people can match him in catching with words the physical excitement of a great performance

Callow’s emphatic biography certainly presents this complicated man in all his contradictory roles

a fine character actor’s tribute to the king of the tribe. The numerous insights show Callow to be that rarity, an actor who can write about acting

Simon Callow is an actor, director and writer. He has appeared on the stage and in many films, including the hugely popular Four Weddings and a Funeral. His books include Being an Actor, Shooting the Actor, Love is Where it Falls, the first two volumes of his four-volume life of Orson Welles, his theatrical memoir My Life in Pieces, and, most recently, the highly acclaimed Charles Dickens and the Great Theatre of the World.

The creator of the Hunchback of Notre Dame, Henry VIII and Captain Bligh, Charles Laughton's career spans 50 films and 40 stage roles. This entralling biography follows him from his parents' hotel in Scarborough to his climactic assumption of the role of King Lear in Statford at the end of his life. Along the way we meet a galaxy of Hollywood greats - from Korda, Hitchcock and Billy WIlder to Gregory Peck, Robert Mitchum and Marilyn Monroe. We also discover a hugely talented and complex man - a legend in his own lifetime who nonetheless counted himself a failure.

Hello Americans

Orson Welles, Volume 2

From Citizen Kane to Macbeth, the second volume of Simon Callow's brilliant, definitive biography of Orson Welles explores the beginning of the end of Welles' Hollywood career.

Simon Callow is to be commended for Hello Americans, as it is not only the best biography of Welles that we can possibly have, it is also one of the best biographies in any field I've read in years

The research is breathtaking. The book is bursting with details, references and anecdotes

Hello Americans is full of witty asides...As a biographer, Callow is a match for his subject in terms of showmanship, but he has gifts of analysis that eluded Welles... enchanting

There is here some of the most vivid and instructive writing on the craft of movie and stage acting I've ever read

This is a bitter-sweet book: we say goodbye to the very best of company but we also look forward to Callow bringing that company back to life in his third volume

Callow's precise prose and sober judgement make this second volume of biography one to be cherished and leaves one eagerly anticipating volume three

Callow's riveting and superlative biography satisfies at every level, and I for one cannot wait for the next volume

A vivid, sympathetic account... provides a definitive explanation of Welles's ultimate, lingering downfall

I am already looking forward to [the third volume] such is Callow's sympathetic absorption in the mass of material, which he handles with a light and ironic touch, that I found myself utterly hooked... As an actor himself Callow writes illuminatingly about Welles's performances

Callow's enterprise is one of the rarest in publishing. It leaves the reader dry-mouthed with anticipation for his final, third volume

The only biog really worth it's salt this year...reliably entertaining, wise and sane

Welles’s packed schedule is rifled through with chatty elegance

The reason for the decline of Orson Welles's career is a hotly debated issue, but decline it certainly did. When Citizen Kane, his first film, opened in 1941, Welles was universally acclaimed as the most audacious filmmaker alive. But instead of marking the beginning of a triumphant career in Hollywood, the film still regularly voted the greatest ever made proved to be an exception in Welles's life and work. 
 
In 1947 Welles left America for Europe and lived for the best part of twenty years in self-imposed exile. Welles himself famously quipped 'I started at the top and worked my way down' - the second volume of Simon Callow's compelling biography tells the story of that complex and protracted descent from grace.

Being An Actor

Completely revised and expanded with entirely new material detailing Callow's relationship with the theatre in the twenty years since Being an Actor first appeared.

Pugnaciously candid... His book is a unique account of an actor's life

The most honest book ever written about us all

Impassioned, intelligent, informative, and quite simply one of the best theatre books I have read

Few actors are more eloquent, honest or entertaining about their life and their profession than Simon Callow. Being an Actor traces his stage journey from the letter he wrote to Laurence Olivier that led him to his first job, to his triumph as Mozart in the original production of Amadeus. This new edition continues to tell the story of his past two decades onstage. Callow discusses his occasionally ambivalent yet always passionate feelings about both film and theatre, conflicting sentiments partially resolved by his acclaimed return to the stage with his solo performances in The Importance of Being Oscar and The Mystery of Charles Dickens, seen in the West End and on Broadway in 2002. 
 
Being an Actor is a guide not only to the profession but also to the intricacies of the art, told with wit, candour, and irrepressible verve by one if the great figures of the stage.

Shooting the Actor

The classic account of filmmaking gone wrong, completely revised and expanded to include new material on the making of A Room with a View, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Shakespeare in Love and the 2002 Oscar Award winner for Best Foreign Film, No Man's Land.

A rare book: a genuinely frank and self-revealing account of an actor's nightmare made real. Comic and even touching

The tale is breathless... works up a gallop

A companion volume to Being an Actor, Callow's classic text about the experience of acting in the theatre, Shooting the Actor reveals the truth about film acting. The book describes his film work, from Amadeus to Four Weddings and a Funeral, from Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls to Shakespeare in Love. 
 
Its centrepiece is a hilarious and sometimes agonising account of the making of Manifesto, shot in the former Yugoslavia. When Callow first met the film's director Dušan Makavejev to discuss the movie, they both got on famously. Months later the two were barely speaking. Insightful and always entertaining, Shooting the Actor reveals more than any formal guide could about the process of film-making and the highly complex nature of being both actor and director.

The Road to Xanadu

Orson Welles, Volume 1

Insightful, incisive &amp; enlightening, the first volume of Simon Callow's comprehensive biography of Orson Welles

Simon Callow's brilliant account of the early years is the best Welles book yet

Callow is not just that rare phenomenon, an actor who can write. He is a superb biographer. His description of the making of Kane is masterly... This is an extraordinary book with extraordinary insights

A knock-down, brass-bound, copper-bottomed triumph...tremendous fun to read... It is Simon Callow's triumph that at the end of this book Orson Welles comes before us just as Oscar Wilde did at the end of Richard Ellmann's superb biography

Welles might seem a difficult subject for a new biography. The legend is already pretty much written in stone. Callow's achievement is threefold: he embraces his subject with such gallumphing energy that the extraordinary power of his subject is conveyed as if for the first, fascinating time; he attempts a sober reassessment, trying to get an honest measure of someone who seemed larger than life...and he provides a genuinely interesting actor's view of the actor

A brilliant biography of the young Orson Welles, from his prodigious childhood and youth, his triumphs with the Mercury Theatre, to the making of Citizen Kane. Vivid, vastly entertaining, this is the definitive Welles biography.

Simon Callow

One Man Band gathers strength page by page. This is by far the funniest volume of the three, and in some ways the most revelatory. The more vulnerable Welles becomes, the more vivid Callow’s writing. The fear was always that a description of Welles’ later years would be depressing. But this is that rare thing: a book about decline which is actually exhilarating

A biography as huge as if it had been fed a Welles-style diet of roasted chicken and foie gras

Callow continuously strikes to the quick and the essential in Welles

Impeccably detailed research peppered with anecdotes and […] his witty conversational style

The third volume has a tremendous panache, matching Welles’s own bravura and extraordinary energy, giving a vivid account of his personality and his productions.

A novel as exhaustive and exhilarating as it’s subject.

Simon Callow probes in comprehensive and penetrating detail into one of the most complex artists of the twentieth century.

A pretty epic survey about his [Welles’] stupendous life.

Callow probes in detail into one of the most complex artists of the twentieth century.

Epic survey of Welles’ life and work, Simon again probes in comprehensive and penetrating detail into one of the most complex artists of the twentieth century… The book shows what it was like to be around Welles, and, with a precision rarely attempted before, what it was like to be him.

It’s a great story in print and Callow’s passion made it riveting on stage… Somehow conjuring up all the extravagance that flowed from Orson Welles’s gifted imagination.

In every way, Callow has captured his subject as he wants him.

Biographical subject and author have found their perfect match.

One Man Band rumbles along… Welles in his middle years is a more engaging prospect than most artists at a similar point. He has been lucky to have Callow as a biographer, balancing warmth with skepticism, fondness with reproof.

One-Man Band

In One-Man Band, the third volume in his epic survey of Orson Welles’ life and work, Simon Callow again probes in comprehensive and penetrating detail into one of the most complex artists of the twentieth century, looking closely at the triumphs and failures of an ambitious one-man assault on one medium after another – theatre, radio, film, television, even, at one point, ballet – in each of which his radical and original approach opened up new directions and hitherto unglimpsed possibilities. 
 
The book begins with Welles’ self-exile from America, and his realisation that he could only function happily as an independent film-maker, a one-man band; by 1964, he had filmed Othello, which took three years to complete, Mr Arkadin, the biggest conundrum in his output, and his masterpiece Chimes at Midnight, as well as Touch of Evil, his sole return to Hollywood and, like all too many of his films, wrested from his grasp and re-edited. Along the way he made inroads into the fledgling medium of television and a number of stage plays, including Moby-Dick, considered by theatre historians to be one of the seminal productions of the century. Meanwhile, his private life was as dramatic as his professional life. 
 
The book shows what it was like to be around Welles, and, with a precision rarely attempted before, what it was like to be him, in which lies the answer to the old riddle: whatever happened to Orson Welles?

Simon Callow

Praise for Orson Welles, Volume 3

One Man Band gathers strength page by page. This is by far the funniest volume of the three, and in some ways the most revelatory. The more vulnerable Welles becomes, the more vivid Callow’s writing. The fear ...

A biography as huge as if it had been fed a Welles-style diet of roasted chicken and foie gras

Callow continuously strikes to the quick and the essential in Welles

One Man Band gathers strength page by page. This is by far the funniest volume of the three, and in some ways the most revelatory. The more vulnerable Welles becomes, the more vivid Callow’s writing. The fear ...

A biography as huge as if it had been fed a Welles-style diet of roasted chicken and foie gras

Callow continuously strikes to the quick and the essential in Welles

One Man Band gathers strength page by page. This is by far the funniest volume of the three, and in some ways the most revelatory. The more vulnerable Welles becomes, the more vivid Callow’s writing. The fear ...

A biography as huge as if it had been fed a Welles-style diet of roasted chicken and foie gras

Callow continuously strikes to the quick and the essential in Welles

Books by Simon Callow

Series by Simon Callow

Orson Welles Biographies

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