Watch Me

Starred review from January 5, 2015
An insecure girl makes herself into an Oscar-winning actress in this captivating memoir. Following up on her well-received coming-of-age memoir A Story Lately Told, Huston recounts her decades-long passage from callow runway model to breakout roles in Prizzi's Honor, The Grifters and The Addams Family and accomplished directing stints. The narrative centers on her turbulent relationships with two larger-than-life men: her father, John Huston, a legendary director and alternately supportive and hyper-critical dad; and her long-time boyfriend, the movie star Jack Nicholson, who in her description veers between ebullient charisma, cold callousness and heartless womanizing. (Brazenly propositioned by a Frenchwoman at Cannes, Nicholson allegedly zoomed off on her motorbike, leaving Huston in tears on the sidewalk.) The author is candid about the self-doubts that often held her back, which makes her professional blossoming all the more interesting. The book's real triumph is in her bewitching prose, which features vivid profiles of innumerable dropped names, wonderfully impressionistic sketches of showbiz scenes and poetic evocations of happiness and loss, especially in her simple, luminous account of the death of her husband, the sculptor Robert Graham. Huston again proves herself a sensitive writer and a born raconteur. Photos.