Individual actors and performers

David Robinson's definitive and monumental biography of Charlie Chaplin, the greatest icon in the history of cinema, who lived one of the most dramatic rags to riches stories ever told.

'Essential reading for any young actor' Dame Maggie Smith
Competition for acting work is fierce and talent is not necessarily enough.

Actor-musicianship is a permanent feature of the musical theatre landscape.

The first in-depth study of the career of Shakespearean 'star' actor and theatrical impresario, Richard Burbage.

An engaging overview of one of the most dynamically entertaining and intellectually challenging British playwrights of the past fifty years.

Anna May Wong was an extraordinary Asian American woman who became the country's most famous film actress of Chinese descent.

Alesha Dixon has one of the most incredible stories of any star, yet she remains an enigma.

'I've been protected by studio publicity men most of my life, so in some ways I'm a goddam image, not a person.

This critical and inclusive edited collection offers an overview of the musical in relation to issues of race, culture and identity.

Comedy has always been one of the most high-profile, glamorous and potentially lucrative markets for scriptwriters, but it is also perceived as one of the hardest.

Explores how David Garrick - actor, newspaper proprietor and part-owner of Drury Lane Theatre - mediated his own celebrity.

The legendary icon tells his story—a tale of art, passion, commitment, addiction, as intense and hypnotic as the man himself.

Richard Harris was never an easy person to get along with.

A practical guide to the principles of teaching and learning movement, this book instructs the actor on how to train the body to become a medium of expression.

As an actor, awareness of your movement is the key to transformation.

A deeply textured and compelling biography of comedy giant Mel Brooks, covering his rags-to-riches life and triumphant career in television, films, and theater, from Patrick McGilligan, the acclaimed author of Young Orson: The Years of Luck and Genius on the Path to Citizen Kane and Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light.

The 20th anniversary edition of this celebrated performing arts industry yearbook.

Within the work of both Jacques Derrida and Walter Benjamin there is a buried theatricality, a theatre to-come.

I Was Never Alone or Oporniki presents an original ethnographic stage play, based on fieldwork conducted in Russia with adults with disabilities.

Winner of the Society for Theatre Research Book Prize 2020Vivien Leigh was perhaps the most iconic actress of the twentieth century.

From the late 1940s to the early '60s, Marilyn Monroe appeared in barely thirty movies, beginning with bit parts and moving on into supporting roles for such films as The Asphalt Jungle, All About Eve, and Clash by Night.

Fred Dibnah's World celebrates the life and work of Britain's best known steeplejack and national treasure, Fred Dibnhah.

Internationally renowned actress Ingrid Bergman was of Swedish and German descent, though she was known by the majority as Swedish.

Meyerhold on Theatre brings together in one volume Vsevolod Meyerhold's most significant writings and utterances, and covers his entire career as a director from 1902 to 1939.

As a director, author, actor, and educator, Frank Galati has been a prominent American artist since the 1980s and continues to create new and innovative work for the theatre.

Ron Athey is one of the most important, prolific and influential performance artists of the past four decades.

Thirteen years ago, Moab is my Washpot, Stephen Fry's autobiography of his early years, was published to rave reviews and was a huge bestseller.

Mario Lanza war mehr als nur ein außergewöhnlicher Tenor – er war eine Sensation, die die Welt der Oper und des Films für immer veränderte.

This book brings together nearly 40 academics and theatre practitioners to chronicle and celebrate the courage, determination and achievements of women on stage across the ages and around the globe.

"e;It shouldn't surprise us that politicians, clerics, rock singers as well as actors queue up to train their voices under the supervision of Patsy Rodenburg.

'Julius Caesar is, simply, Shakespeare's African play' John Kani In 2012, actor Paterson Joseph played the role of Brutus in the Royal Shakespeare Company's acclaimed production of Julius Caesar - Gregory Doran's last play before becoming Artistic Director for the RSC.

Great Shakespeareans offers a systematic account of those figures who have had the greatest influence on the interpretation, understanding and cultural reception of Shakespeare, both nationally and internationally.

The purpose of this Handbook is to provide students with an overview of key developments in queer and trans feminist theories and their significance to the field of contemporary performance studies.

Covering David Edgar''s most important plays and performances, as well as his critical reception, this study approaches the playwright as a political writer.

Great Shakespeareans offers a systematic account of those figures who have had the greatest influence on the interpretation, understanding and cultural reception of Shakespeare, both nationally and internationally.

Dolores del Rio's enormously successful career in Hollywood, in Mexico, and internationally illuminates issues of race, ethnicity, and gender through the lenses of beauty and celebrity.

We wept at his Oscar-winning role in Marty.

Today the late actor Jerry Orbach (1935-2004) is best remembered as the world-weary New York City Detective Lennie Briscoe from the Emmy Award-winning NBC television series Law and Order.

Paul McDonald's study of the actor-filmmaker George Clooney traces the star's career, from his role in the hit television medical drama ER to his dual screen persona, allowing him to move seamlessly from commercial hits such as Out of Sight (1998) and Ocean's Eleven (2001) to more offbeat roles in such films as Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?

This monograph is the first study to critically examine works of performance made for an audience of one.

Cheek by Jowl, founded by Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod in 1981, is one of the world's most critically acclaimed classical theatre companies.

Since its emergence in the 1920s, Iraqi-Kurdish theatre was used as a tool of national identity building and modernisation.

This is a book about the long cultural shadow cast by a single bestselling novel, Anthony Hope's The Prisoner of Zenda (1894), which introduced Ruritania, a colourful pocket kingdom.

As the Kremlin's crackdown on freedom of expression continues to tighten, Russian playwrights and directors are using documentary theatre to create space for the public discussion of injustice in the civic sphere and its connections to the country's twentieth-century past.

Tony Leung Chiu-Wai investigates the rich, prolific career of an acclaimed leading man of Hong Kong and Chinese film and television: the star of more than 70 films and dozens of television series, and the only Hong Kong actor to earn the Cannes Film Festival's best-actor award.