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What's My Motivation?

What's My Motivation?

As a boy, Michael Simkins always wanted to be someone. While his friends were out getting laid and stoned, he was tucked up at home dreaming of his name in lights, of holding an audience rapt, of perhaps becoming a TV heart-throb, or having someone, anyone, ask for his autograph in the supermarket. This is the true story of an obsessive pursuit of acting fame. It is a life marked by occasional hard-fought successes and routine helpings of ritual humiliation: scout hut Gilbert and Sullivan, dodgy rock operas, sewage farm theatre workshop, Christmas panto hell, straight-to-video film flops, leading roles in Crimewatch reconstructions and dressing up as a chicken to advertise TV dinners. It is a hilarious tale of turgid theatre, tights, trusses and tonsil tennis with Timothy Spall.

Reviews

  • Funny, engaging, perceptive and hugely entertaining

    Stephen Fry

  • Screamingly funny - set to become a classic

    Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday

  • A real page-turner and a genuinely funny and honest book about the actor's life

    Michael Billington, Guardian

  • Michael writes about disaster, humiliation, rejection and ridicule - the hilarious truth

    Nicholas Hytner

  • Casts an objective eye on the crazy world of the actor with an accuracy that is both chilling and charming

    Mike Leigh

More from this Author

About the Author

Michael Simkins

Michael Simkins was born in 1957 and spent his childhood in a sweetshop in Brighton. In 1966 he saw his first cricket match on the TV, and from that moment he was hooked. When he hasn't been playing, watching or dreaming about cricket, Michael has spent his time acting. He has appeared in countless plays and musicals in the west end, most recently as Billy Flynn in Chicago, and also features regularly on TV and the silver screen, usually playing unsuspecting husbands, police sergeants or experts. He lives with his wife, the actress Julia Deakin, in north-west London, and still plays cricket to a worryingly low standard all over the Southern Counties.

Michael Simkins

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