From getting his big break as Third Shepherd in the school nativity play, to mistaking a Hollywood star for an estate agent, Hugh Bonneville creates a vivid picture of a career on stage and screen.
Charmingly self-deprecating ... Acting may be full of rejection, waiting and humiliation, but what it clearly isn’t, at least in Bonneville’s hands, is dull ... This, it’s clear, is a professional memoir and the boundaries are firm ... And what a professional memoir ... Not gossipy ... Riveting.
If collapsing into laughter is what you need at the moment, then Playing Under the Piano could be the book for you. As a genre, actors’ memoirs are usually to be treated with utmost suspicion; I find most of them gruesome ... But Bonneville’s is great fun ... I’m giving this a four-star review ... Delicious and endearing.
