Patti LuPone: A Memoir »

Patti LuPone swept the 2008 theater awards winning the Tony, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle Awards for Best Actress in a Musical for her performance as Rose in the critically acclaimed Broadway production of the classic musical Gypsy. LuPone has twice been nominated for an Emmy Award, has won two Grammy awards, and has numerous film, television, and on- and off-Broadway stage credits to her name. A five-time Tony nominee and two-time winner, LuPone was the first American actor to win Britain's Olivier Award.

“I have been incredibly fortunate over the course of my career to have been associated with some extraordinary dramatic and musical productions, and also some rather spectacular disasters. Looking back, I can find gifts and life lessons in every one.”

The legendary Patti LuPone is one of the theatre’s most beloved leading ladies. Now she lays it all bare, sharing the intimate story of her life both onstage and off—through the dizzying highs and darkest lows—with the humor and outspokenness that have become her trademarks.

With nearly 100 photographs, including an 8-page four-color insert, and illuminating details about the life of a working actor, from inspired costars and demanding directors to her distinct perspective on how she developed and honed her Tony Award–winning performances, Patti LuPone: A Memoir is as inspirational as it is entertaining. And though the title might say “a memoir,” this is ultimately a love letter to the theatre by a unique American artist.

Raised on Long Island’s North Shore, Patti discovered her calling at the age of four and knew that she was destined for the stage. A prodigiously gifted child, she was one of only 36 young actors chosen for the inaugural class of The Juilliard School’s Drama Division, where she fought near-constant criticism from her instructors, and here describes those early years with disarming frankness.

From the heady days of her early twenties—crisscrossing the country as a founding member of the classical repertory theatre ensemble, The Acting Company—to her early success on Broadway, her four-year stint as Libby Thacher on the television series Life Goes On, her loving marriage to Matt Johnston, and much, much more, Patti chronicles her professional and personal life with inimitable candor and wit.
 
With its insightful retrospective of her career-defining turns, both on Broadway and abroad, in Evita, Les Misérables, Anything Goes, Sunset Boulevard, Sweeney Todd, and Gypsy, Patti LuPone: A Memoir reveals the artist’s deeply felt passion for music and the theatre and is, in the end, the compelling and quintessential tale of an exceptional life well lived.

The New York Times - Charles Isherwood

Patti LuPone: A Memoir…represents no dazzling literary feat…although the workmanlike prose is enlivened with zesty infusions of gum-chewing New York humor…But nobody reads showbiz autobiographies to discover the next Proust. If a book rings true and shovels a sufficiency of dirt, revealing the pain and grit without quite dousing the glamour, we are satisfied. On both scores Ms. LuPone's book delivers. She comes across as a straight talker, a tireless worker and an occasional tantrum thrower and Valium taker.

Prologue Opening Night, Gypsy 1

Broadway, 2008

1 Northport, Long Island 11

1949-1968

2 The Audition 25

New York City, 1968

3 The Making of an Actor 31

Juilliard, 1968-1972

4 The Acting Company 51

1972-1976

5 The Baker's Wife, or Hitler's Road Show 71

1976

6 David Mamet and Me 91

7 Evita, Part 1 103

Audition and Out of Town, 1979

8 Evita, Part 2 127

New York and Sydney, 1979-1981

9 A Working Actor, Part 1 145

1952-1985

10 The Cradle Will Rock, Les Miserables, LBJ, A Sicilian in Sicily 161

1985-1987

11 Anything Goes, Driving Miss Daisy, Life Goes On, A New Life 185

1987-1992

12 Sunset Boulevard, Part 1 203

September 1992-July 1993

13 Sunset Boulevard, Part 2 223

July 1993-March 1994

14 A Working Actor, Part 2 247

1994-2000

15 Several Sweeney Todds, and Sondheim 263

2000, 2001, 2005

16 Gypsy 281

Ravinia, August 2006-Encoresi, July 2007

17 Gypsy 293

Broadway, February 2008-January 2009

Epilogue Closing Night, Gypsy 307

Broadway, January 2009

Coda 313

Acknowledgments 317

Index 319