Playing For Real

'This collection of 16 question-and-answer style interviews with leading actors gives a fascinating insight into the methods, challenges and rewards of taking on roles of people in the public eye.' - Whatsonstage.com 'This book of interviews brilliantly explores what it means for an actor to be playing Freud or Gordon Brown, Lawrence of Arabia or Charles Dickens. The actors' answers are as various as the people being portrayed but the intriguing problem these interviews investigate is, for the first time, excitingly put centre-stage.' - Peter Holland, McMeel Family Professor in Shakespeare Studies, University of Notre Dame, USA 'This invaluable book offers riveting and fascinating insights into the actor's process and the crucial question as to how fact might become fiction.' - Steve Waters, playwright and academic, University of Birmingham, UK

This is the first book to explore how actors play real people. Is it possible to embody a genius like Mozart, Woolf or Darwin?

Bringing together original conversations with award-winning actors, the line-up includes Jeremy Irons, Dame Eileen Atkins, David Morrissey, Henry Goodman, and Sir Ian McKellen.
This is the first book to explore how actors play real people. How do you capture Hitler, Mugabe, or a serial killer? How do you portray living monarchs or political leaders? Is it possible to embody a genius like Mozart, Woolf or Darwin? What are the pressures of performing an icon like Marlene Dietrich?

Bringing together original conversations with award-winning actors, the line-up includes Jeremy Irons, Dame Eileen Atkins, David Morrissey, Henry Goodman, and Sir Ian McKellen.