Christopher Plummer Author of In Spite of Myself: A Memoir A deeply honest self-portrait by one of the most celebrated actors of our time. In Spite of Myself is a fascinating account of Christopher Plummer’s colourful life in film and on the stage. He candidly writes of his early acting career with the Stratford Festival then in its infancy and about legendary colleagues including Sir Laurence Olivier, Peter O’Toole and Vanessa Redgrave. This is an extraordinary account of a life lived to the fullest that is sure to have something for everyone. About the Author Christopher Plummer was born in 1929 in Toronto, Ontario, and grew up in Montreal. He has acted in more than one hundred feature films and he has starred in Great Britain’s National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Stratford Festival of Canada on Broadway. He has won two Tony Awards for Best Actor and 2 Emmys. In 1986 he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada. Reviews In this large and enthusiastic memoir, Plummer tells of his privileged Canadian upbringing and his eventual career success as an international star of stage and screen….. An enjoyable read, packed with anecdotes and amusing stories from a life in show business, this book belongs on any library's film or theater shelves.-- Kathleen Hughes, Booklist October 15, 2008 Fans of Plummer's acclaimed Shakespearean performances or his stately film roles, from Captain von Trapp in The Sound of Music to the Klingon General Chang in Star Trek VI, may not recognize him in this breezy, bawdy memoir. Plummer drinks and parties his way through a six-decade career; beds starlets, prompters and wardrobe girls; and endures countless mid-performance indignities and pratfalls. (Lesson repeatedly learned: actors and stagehands should not get drunk right before the show.) Plummer is ebullient, a bit hammy ("I cried myself to sleep for weeks," he sobs, after his dog Toadie dies), full of canny insights into the actor's craft and prone to occasional stabs of self-reproach over his own failed marriages, aloof parenting and unjustified tantrums. Throughout, he's an enchanting observer of the showbiz cavalcade, drawing vivid thumbnails of everyone from Laurence Olivier to Lenny Bruce and tossing off witty anecdotes ("George C. Scott turned up at our doorstep one morning at 4:30 a.m. looking most sinister and as usual dripping blood from head to toe") like the most effortless ad libs. The result is a sparkling star turn from a born raconteur for whom all the world is indeed a stage. Publishers Weekly (September 08, 2008)