Moving pictures autobiography meaning

Ali MacGraw. In this candid, courageous autobiography, MacGraw discusses her artistic, emotionally cold parents, her schooling at Wellesley College and her stint as Diana Vreeland's "girl" at Harper's Bazaar. This is the autobiography of a former photographer's stylist who became an international film celebrity and married two of Hollywood's biggest names, but then seemed to throw it all away.

McQueen was a troubled man who longed to live simply, almost reclusively, with his wife barefoot and pregnant. At his insistence MacGraw gave up acting at the peak of her fame, making a decision from which her career never recovered. When the tumultuous marriage ended after six years she was not much in demand, and what acting she did, for example in television's "Dynasty", was ridiculed - justly, she felt.

A lifelong pattern of destructive love affairs continued and her depression was abetted by unacknowledged alcoholism. When a friend persuaded her in to go to the Betty Ford Clinic, MacGraw felt she needed only a "tune-up". What she found instead was life-saving help. Now Ali MacGraw takes stock of her life, revising the mythical childhood she once invented for a "Time" cover story and describing the heady early years in New York, her attempted transformation by the Hollywood machine and the realities she faces today as a woman who hopes her greatest adventures are yet to come.

A sudden star in her first major role, in Goodbye, Columbus inand the following year with the even more popular Love Story. This is certainly not a series of pretty pictures. McGraw reveals that a lot more action, not all of it happy, was going on off- stage. Los Angeles Times - Constance Casey "Moving Pictures" demonstrates that underneath all that shallow stuff, lies "an ordinary human heart.

Loading interface About the author. Ali MacGraw 8 books 2 followers. Write a Review. Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book! Community Reviews. Search review text. Displaying 1 - 30 of 38 reviews. Looking back at this memoir, I feel that I actually really enjoyed it. I learned a lot from it about what being an alcoholic is like and what being a sensitive person can come to.

At the time that I was reading the book, I had a range of responses and emotions. Some of the interlude pieces seemed fluffy to me, but, then, as I learned more about MacGraw, I realized how far she had come.

Moving pictures autobiography meaning: Moving Pictures is his

To write a fluffy interlude piece was a big deal for her. Her mind was finally quiet enough to be able to observe and enjoy fluff in life. I also felt annoyed at times that MacGraw was so insecure, weak, so caught up in trying to keep or get a man. All she wanted for a long time was just to have a man, almost didn't matter who. It amazes me how celebrities can sometimes be the most insecure.

Moving pictures autobiography meaning: Moving Pictures (TV series), a

I don't think it would be inaccurate to say she was kind of a mess and I don't like saying these kinds of things about people. I am a big Bob Evans fan, and I couldn't help but moving pictures autobiography meaning that she made a big mistake in taking up with Steve McQueen. He didn't permit her to work in what were her hottest years, and she's ultimately broke now because of it.

Good for McGraw though for being honest and both copping to that her marriage with Steve was anything but great and had its share of artifice and dishonesty and also for admitting nonetheless that, despite all the abuse she took from him and heartache, she still was and maybe still is desperately in love with him and had such a strong, sparking attraction.

She said she cheated on Evans with Steve because she was pretty sure Evans was going to cheat on her so she wanted to do it first. Evans may or may not have cheated, but reading that it was MacGraw's insecurity that caused the affair and the demise of a good marriage to the father of her son was almost humbling to read and very sad.

Her dependence on alcohol and admission that she is an alcoholic was also surprising. You think celebrities have it all, but they don't. It almost made me laugh that we look up so much to celebrities, but they are exponentially more troubled and misguided than we can imagine. I was disappointed MacGraw did not talk about her time at Wellesley more.

As a fellow Wellesley alum, I was looking forward to that. She certainly had a fascinating career as a photographer's assistant before she became a famous actress. She put together amazing photo shoots and found odd props. It was funny to think of MacGraw schlepping around NYC in her 20s and then taking on acting at the ripe, old age of Anyway, good but sad book.

She writes about her 30 day stay at the Betty Ford Clinic with great honesty. For anyone curious about that, this is a great read. Finally, I want to thank Linda Grey at Bantam for sticking with me months after this manuscript was due, believing that I had a story to tell and that I would finally deliver it. And my especial thanks to my editor, Beverly Lewis, who looked at the whole thing with a much-needed fresh eye long after I had grown dizzy with it, and with sensitivity and intelligence and remarkable patience helped to shape it into a real book.

I have been blessed to have certain children in my life beautiful grown-ups now.

Moving pictures autobiography meaning: But the aim of memoir—to

And finally, my deep gratitude to the hundreds, if not thousands of people whom I know only by their first names. Their unconditional acceptance and honesty have taught me how to live. I bought my first house today not the eighteenth-century white clapboard farmhouse and barn I had always imagined, somewhere in New England. This one is a small adobe half-buried in the terra-cotta hills of Tesuque, New Mexico, as far away from my roots as are they from my temporary home, Los Angeles, where I have lived these many adventure-filled years.

This little house is surrounded by pale silver shrubs and wild flowers whose names I have yet to learn, and the sky is a swiftly changing canvas of huge clouds chasing one another across a field of brilliant blue. At night I can touch the stars and the iridescent silver moon, and always I can breathe the clean, perfumed air. Like all good presents it came as a surprise, and like a child I catch myself smiling when I think about it.

It wasnt always this way. For so many years, in circumstances that seemed so perfect to the great invisible them out there, I existed as a kind of shadow woman. Part of me performed appropriately, and sometimes even brilliantly much more so in life than I usually did on screen. But there was another part of me that always, always felt that everything was happening to the shadow standing right next to me.

All that attention. All that praise. All those fabulous times. The real me was there, too, with a fixed smile and a certain deceptive energy. But beneath the unconscious pose there was nearly always a dull ache in my heart. It was unfocused, but behind my eyes I was crying. For a very long time I had no idea that there were two of me. Scott Berg.

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