Billie Whitelaw...Who He?: An autoibiography. Billie Whitelaw (1st Edn H/B) 1995

 BILLIE WHITELAW... WHO HE? AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY by Billie Whitelaw.

The extraaordinary life story of an uneducated girl from wartime Coventry, brought up in Bradford, who - without ever really wanting to be an actress - became one of Laurence Olivier's leading ladies at the National Theatre, a Doctor of Literature and Univesity Lecturer, a Fellow of Reading University and a Commander of the British Empire - and, most important of all, the muse of Samuel Beckett, with whom she shared a close working relationship for a quater of a century.

With candour, and often undiscretion, Bille Whitelaw writes about her mentors and colleagues. They include names like Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, Albert Finney, Marcello Mastroianni, joan Littlewood and dozens of others. But the story she tells is a far cry from an ;and-then-i-played' chronology. In telling her journey of her life, Billie Whitelaw does not shrink from describing the tragedies which killed her father and almost robbed her of both her son and her husband. In unique detail her book also relates how the plays Beckett directed with her come to life. With humour and pathos, she describes early backstage romances in the North, a difficult first marriage, and her colourful life spanning five decades as a working actress.

Writing always as a woman, rather than as a artist recalling her career, Billiw Whitelaw has given us an autobiography that is as unusual as it s forgettable.

a FIRST EDITION hardback published n 1995 by John Cutis/Hodder & Stoughton