Editions

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 trained at RADA. He has appeared in more than 70 plays, stage highlights include A View from the Bridge at the National Theatre as well as musicals Chicago and Mamma Mia. He also directed Alan Ayckbourn's Absent Friends at the Greenwich Theatre. He has made countless TV appearances - recent credits include Foyle's War and My Family - as well as turns on the silver screen in such films as Mike Leigh's Topsy-Turvy. He has worked with luminaries as diverse as Anthony Perkins, John Malkovich, Michael Gambon and Buster Merryfield. He lives with his actress wife Julia in London.

Michael Simkins

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