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Private Faces and Public Places

The Autobiography

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Private Faces and Public Places

By: Sian Phillips
Narrated by: Sian Phillips
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About this listen

The remarkably honest and brilliantly entertaining memoir of one of our finest acting Dames whose long and celebrated career includes her much-loved performance as Livia in I, Claudius and who was married for 20 years to the hell-raising Hollywood star Peter O'Toole.

Siân Phillips has a long and celebrated career on both stage and screen. For the first time, her two best-selling volumes of memoir, Private Faces and Public Places, will be available as a single volume with a brand new foreword by the author.

With wonderful stories and unflinching candour, Private Faces and Public Places covers her life from its beginnings in the remote Welsh countryside, where life hadn't changed for centuries, to finding herself at the epicentre of the acting world at its most glamorous alongside husband Peter O'Toole, whose career was about to take off with the spellbinding Lawrence of Arabia. Siân describes the mad and wonderfully impulsive times with O'Toole alongside the tempestuous, insecure and often lonely periods in their marriage. Incredibly, it endures over 20 years.

When it ends, surprising even herself, she plunges straight into another marriage, with the much younger actor Robin Sachs. Emerging alone from her second marriage, triumphant and unrepentant, the story Siân tells ranks alongside the very best in show business.

©1999 Sian Phillips (P)2021 Hodder & Stoughton Limited
Entertainment & Celebrities Celebrity Marriage Biography Career Memoir

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All stars
Most relevant
I do have a passion for actor’s autobiographies. This autobiography (of which we have two volumes) however, is beyond what I have heard or read before. With a gripping honesty Dame Sian really does take us on her (now ubiquitously described) journey. And without cliche it is an expedition, sometimes literally. At one point I felt as if I was in that helicopter with her on a deadly mission to Angel Falls with Peter O’Toole. Sian’s voice is clear, calming and soothing and her outlook on life has helped me take stock of my own. I listened to the whole audiobook and immediately had to listen to it again. From the verdant Welsh village and community where she grew up to her life in London, punctuated with many international trips to exotic, glamorous locations, we travel with her. It is also a love letter to her family, the people she has shared her life with, laughed with and adored. With a rare eloquence, Dame Sian recounts her years on the stage and screen with fascinating detail. Thank you Dame Sian for narrating your autobiography, I just hope you’ll write your third instalment very soon.

The best autobiography I have ever listened to.

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Sian Phillips allows herself to be known to us and in so doing bestows that unique privilege that normally only comes with deep and close friendship.She unfolds her life with heart-touching sincerity, expressing herself completely naturally, as if she barely realises that the magnificence of her poetic prose is a thing of beauty in itself, as moving as the narrative of a life of one who has spent all her love on those who have peopled her life

A Privilege to Share

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Superb account by one of our best actresses from the time spent with O’Toole, to arriving where she is today.

What a life.

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Really good book. She had a good life. Acted since she was young . Enjoyed it

Sian

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admired the honesty which this book portrayed of a often sad but exciting life.Wonderful experience

enthralling

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