The intimate and semi-entertaining details of an actor’s childhood and her rise to stardom in Hollywood.
The autobiography of a Mainer who hit the big time in Hollywood.
Born and raised in Portland, Maine, Kendrick started acting professionally at a very young age when she landed a part in a community theater production of Annie. From there, she scored other parts in a variety of plays and eventually wound up in Hollywood, where she's had roles in the Twilight and Pitch Perfect series and Up in the Air, among other movies. "My entire personality was fully formed by the time I was three,” writes the author. “I was an obstinate, determined little ball of anxiety. I’d thought of myself as fearful and shrinking in childhood but I was often single-minded and pugnacious. From age three onward I have been practical and skeptical and occasionally more courageous than I have any right to be." Kendrick blends her discussion of how she entered into the acting business with commentary on events in her childhood, most of which are typical. She covers her small stature, her friends and enemies in grade school, her crushes on a number of boys, how she learned about fashion and stylists in Hollywood, what it was like to work with famous actors like George Clooney, and a host of other, often mundane details of her life. Because she was a child actor, most of Kendrick’s stories are focused on her early, formative years when she had to balance work and trying to live a somewhat normal childhood. Unfortunately, her attempts at humor often fall flat, making her sound unnecessarily snarky instead of funny, and her overall tone borders on self-obsessed. Fans of Kendrick and those infatuated with knowing the personal details of a celebrity's life will enjoy finding out how the author rose to stardom; others may find the content less than entertaining. Thanks to her hard work, Kendrick is a scrappy little somebody now, but she should stick to acting.
The intimate and semi-entertaining details of an actor’s childhood and her rise to stardom in Hollywood.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1720-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2016
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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