Billie Whitelaw

the long version

Billie Whitelaw has been one of Laurence Olivier's leading ladies; she has worked with Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, Albert Finney, Peter Sellers, and other greats; she has appeared in films that include The Sleeping Tiger, Miracle in Soho, Make Mine Mink, The Krays, and The Omen (in which she played the notoriously evil nanny); most of all, she was the longtime muse of the great playwright Samuel Beckett, with whom she worked closely for twenty-five years. In this likable, clear-eyed memoir Whitelaw traces the arc of her extraordinary career - a career that transported her from an underprivileged childhood in Coventry to the brightest lights of stage and screen, though she never even dreamed of becoming an actress. With candor, humor, and generous detail, she reveals what it was like to work with the most accomplished and up-and-coming directors, playwrights, and fellow actors of her time. She gives us an intimate view of the day-to-day workings of the mind of Beckett as he devised his unique, intense theatrical style in plays like Footfalls, Play, and Happy Days.