RaveVogue... fascinating, exhaustively researched, and utterly absorbing ... Harris...clearly has an empathy and a deep admiration for Nichols, but this is not a sugarcoated biography. The piercing cruelty Nichols could show toward performers, often pushing them to the edge of breakdown during rehearsals, is dealt with frankly ... The burden of Mike Nichols: A Life is that it has to retain its readers’ attention to such a degree that they can resist the urge to put the book down for a few hours and watch a Nichols film.
Andrew Lloyd Webber
PanThe New York Times Book Review'Autobiographies are by definition self-serving and mine is no exception,' [Webber] says, adding he was pressured to write it by friends and a literary agent, and finally agreed 'primarily to shut them up.' Not exactly the promise of a page-turner to come. Still, he soldiers on. And so must I ... in 1981, Milos Forman approached him about playing Mozart in his film version of Amadeus. Lloyd Webber was appalled, telling Forman that he was 'a hopeless actor' ... My suspicion is that Lloyd Webber might have had a similar conversation with his book editor, arguing that he really didn’t want to write a memoir. If so, readers may finish this book wishing the editor had agreed.
