Actor Terry lifts the curtain on 60-year career
PerthTheatre legend writes memoirs
Perth Theatre legend and celebrated octogenarian Terry Wale, an actor, director and playwright, has written a book about life in the profession. a long term home base in the Fair City.
Lesley and Terry started the editing and proofreading last January so what was a very strange and difficult year for so many was put to the best use possible, and in October they managed to get the memoir published.
The book reproduces photographs from Perth Theatre and Pitlochry Festival Theatre from the 1970s onwards, many of which were taken by well known Perth residents, the photographers Louis Flood senior and Louis Flood junior.
On the back of the book Terry writes: “Pretending to be Somebody Else is not a ‘Rags to Riches’ story; far from it in fact. I was never in rags, and throughout a career that spanned more than six decades, I never achieved the riches that go hand-in-hand with stardom.
“What it’s all about is my life as an actor, a story that is uniquely mine, but which will resonate in many respects with at least 85 per cent of my fellow actors, also deprived of fame and fortune.”
An online review said of the book: “Terry Wale’s memoir tells it as it was, giving a realistic glimpse behind the scenes into how totally unglamorous and tough the life of a jobbing actor was - and indeed still is.”
Reader reviewer HM Roberts concluded: “This is a sometimes rather sad tale of the how often success or failure depends on luck and being in the right place at the right time rather than on ability.”
And from JAB Hills: “This is a superb account of a jobbing actor’s life with all its joys, frustrations and hopes, told with humour and sensitivity. I experienced several laugh-out loud moments’..”
Pretending to be Somebody Else is available on Kindle at £4.99 and in paperback on Amazon costing £13.99.
To order a copy, go to https://tinyurl.com/ y6p32trs
He has been writing his memoirs for the past 25 years and he decided that it was now or never