In Spite of Myself: A Memoir

Plummer, Christopher

ISBN 10: 0307396797 / ISBN 13: 9780307396792

Published by Toronto: Knopf Canada, 2008

About this Item

First printing of the First Canadian edition. Signed and inscribed ("Hugh and Joan - with thanks") by Christopher Plummer on title page. 648 pages; black-and-white photos throughout the text. Just a touch of wear to edges.

Seller Inventory # 415825

Bibliographic Details

• Title: In Spite of Myself: A Memoir
• Publisher: Toronto: Knopf Canada
• Publication Date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0307396797
• ISBN 13: 9780307396792
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fine
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)
• Seller catalogs:
  • Biography and Autobiography
  • Film, Movies, Television
  • Theatre and Plays

About this title

Synopsis

Canada’s most celebrated and acclaimed actor lets loose in a magnificent memoir that will delight and enchant readers across the country.

A rollicking, rich self-portrait written by one of today’s greatest living actors. The story of a “young wastrel, incurably romantic, spoiled rotten” – his privileged Montreal background, rich in Victorian gentility, included steam yachts, rare orchid farms, music lessons in Paris and Berlin – “who tore himself away from the ski slopes to break into the big, bad world of theater not from the streets up but from an Edwardian living room down.”

Plummer writes of his early acting days – on radio and stage with William Shatner and other fellow Canadians; of the early days of the Stratford Festival in southern Ontario; of his Broadway debut at twenty-four in The Starcross Story, starring Eva Le Gallienne (“It opened and closed in one night, but what a night!”); of joining Peter Hall’s Royal Shakespeare Company (its other members included Judi Dench, Vanessa Redgrave and Peter O’Toole); of his first picture, Stage Struck, directed by Sidney Lumet; and of The Sound of Music, which he affectionately dubbed “S&M.”

He writes about his legendary colleagues: Dame Judith Anderson (“the Tasmanian devil from Down Under”); Sir Tyrone Guthrie; Sir Laurence Olivier; Elia Kazan (“this chameleon of chameleons might change into you, wear your skin, steal your soul”); and “that reprobate” Jason Robards, among many others.

A revelation of the wild and exuberant ride that is the actor’s – at least this actor’s – life.

About the Author

Christopher Plummer, a Companion of the Order of Canada, was born in Toronto, Ontario, and grew up in Montreal. He has acted in more than one hundred feature films, and he has starred in Great Britain’s National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Stratford Festival of Canada and sixteen Broadway plays. He received two Tony Awards for Best Actor (Barrymore; Cyrano), and has been nominated a total of seven times. He lives in Connecticut.