Books written by actors

Tennis player Agassi's incredible memory plus the world's best ghostwriter—JR Moehringer, also hired by Prince Harry—combine to make this possibly the finest sports memoir ever. Alongside the propulsive account of his twenty-one-year career, Agassi shares stories of the women in his life: Barbra Streisand, first wife Brooke Shields, and true love Steffi Graf.

Once she gets her unhappy childhood out of the way, Garten tells a story we rarely hear: a behind-the-scenes, nuts-and-bolts look at entrepreneurial success, woman style. From the retail food shop in the Hamptons she bought on a lark (it had the silly name Barefoot Contessa) to her reign over our bookshelves and televisions, she steeps, pours, and spills the tea.

Remember the frostbitten royal "todger"? In his candid and charming memoir, Harry comes off as an ordinary guy who hasn’t always been able to rise to the extraordinary demands of his life and his family, discussing even his most idiotic mistakes with rue, self-effacing humor, and relief. Ghostwriter JR Moehringer totally earned the zillions he got for this.

The book that kicked off Bourdain's long run as both the hottest and coolest man in haute cuisine is so full of life, that it's hard to believe he's gone. Remembered for its wild, druggy stories of life in a professional kitchen and its cautionary tales about horrifying restaurant practices, the memoir is also full of gorgeously sensual food writing. Those oysters!

Clawing her way out of a childhood that makes Oliver Twist look like a fairy tale, Viola Davis built herself from the bottom up, buttressing her talent with iron determination, humility, resilience, and hard-won self-esteem. She needed every bit of it to triumph over the misogyny, racism, and colorism that plagued her path to EGOT stardom. A profoundly inspiring tale.

How is rock's most notorious wild man even still alive? We learn all about it in this amazing account of resilience and (eventually) renunciation. As rowdy and raw and badass British as the man himself, Richards' doorstopper memoir is remembered not just for the shade he threw on Mick Jagger's manhood but for the incredible yarns behind the music.

The Boss is a serious man, serious about his dreams, his music, his country, and his fans, and definitely serious about his memoir. Possibly thanks to a lifetime of saying no to drugs, its pages are filled with detailed storytelling, hilarious characterizations, and crystal-clear recollections of his music and business career.

The famous New York Times restaurant critic's memoir of her first 30 years is a smorgasbord of compelling locations—New York in the 1960s, boarding school in Montreal, travels in Tunisia, Crete, and beyond—and unforgettable characters. None is more so than her mother, The Queen of Mold, whom young Ruthie deftly prevented from poisoning her guests.

You've heard she's a perfectionist? Streisand reportedly spent 20 years on this 1,000-page opus, but in addition to telling her life story, this extraordinary woman offers a short course in acting, directing, film editing, sound mixing, lighting, and more. The 48-hour audio version, recorded in that throaty Brooklyn accent, with ad-libs and musical excerpts, is truly priceless.

Despite the tabloid buzz that surrounds Jenner, this book introduces us to an honest, humble, gentle spirit who is quick to admit her mistakes as a husband, a father, and a once somewhat clueless trans person. From the first time she cross-dressed at the age of 10, Jenner never escaped the torment of the urge to be a woman. In this telling, Kim Kardashian saved her life.

The foremother of what is by now a whole bookstore full of memoirs by comedians sets a never-exceeded standard for sheer funniness. Every page is funny. Even the blurbs are clever. (“Totally worth it.” —Trees.) The great critic Janet Maslin called Fey the Nora Ephron of her generation, and like Nora, she's not big on trauma and drama—she's all about the laughs.

The only National Book Award winner on this list, Smith's gorgeously written memoir of her relationship with the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe is the premiere portrait of New York's downtown scene in the late nineteen-sixties and seventies. Those who think of her as a wild punk rocker will be enchanted by her unique decorum, her tenderness and her finely polished sentences.

Michelle had us from hello with this open-hearted memoir, beginning with the joys of growing up on the Southside of Chicago and moving through the challenges of life in the White House. The account of her relationship with the young lawyer "with a weird name" she was assigned to mentor one summer is as delicious as the ice cream cones they had on their first date.

Given her put-together appearance and solid gold resume, you might not expect the memoir of Asian-American broadcasting pioneer Chung to be so irreverent and at times, even badass. Having often been the only girl and POC in the room over the course of a fifty-year career, Chung always tells it like it is, including the juicy story of her long love with Maury Povich.

Completely unique among memoirs from our Hollywood and Broadway thespians, Parker's book is a literary gem: a collection of 34 letters to the men in her life. First comes "Dear Grandpa," to the grandfather she never met, followed by "Dear Daddy," to her beloved late father. Others address lovers, near-strangers, a hospital orderly, her accountant, and more.

Born in the last years of apartheid to a white father and a black mother in flagrant violation of South Africa’s Immorality Act, Noah's title is literal. If he went out with both parents, his father had to walk down the other side of the street. With insight, love and humor, the former host of The Daily Show recalls a tumultuous childhood and a gutsy coming into his own.

A diarist and a philosopher as well as an A-list actor, McConaughey offers his own laid-back brand of advice and inspiration along with stories from the sets of his breakout successes in A Time to Kill and Dazed and Confused. Alright, alright, alright, the naked bongo incident of 1999 makes the cut as well.

The daughter of Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, the stepdaughter of Elizabeth Taylor, the ex-wife of Paul Simon, there is no celebrity memoir quite like the one. If you know her only as Princess Leia of Star Wars, a role she created at nineteen, this book will introduce a brilliant, funny woman and her struggles. Her untimely death at 60 makes her audiobook performance all the more precious.

The single book-length narrative from the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, the lush imagery and storytelling energy of his famous lyrics drives Dylan's prose style as well. Focusing on a portrait of the artist as a young folk musician in Greenwich Village, circa 1961, this memoir is cranky, erudite, mysterious, brilliant, and positively Dylan all the way.

As the son of Dominick Dunne and nephew of Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne, the author had an extraordinary childhood growing up among the glitterati of the 1970s, from Sinatra and Capote to his longtime best friend Carrie Fisher. He frames his funny, engaging memoir with a searing account of his actress sister's 1982 murder by her boyfriend.