Skip to content
Responsive image
Vendor
Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English

THE ACTRESS

Amy Sohn

A breathtakingly original tale of modern Hollywood fame, an exploration of the treachery of love, and a reminder that all ambition comes at a cost.
Maddy Faucher is an aspiring actress and her career is finally on the rise. Her starring role in a film that’s premiering at a Sundance-like festival, directed by her boyfriend, Dan, wins her critical and popular acclaim on the indie circuit. But when she meets big Hollywood producer Bridget Ash at the glittering Park City event, her life is forever changed: Bridget wants Maddy to star in a new project alongside the beautiful, sexy, and hugely famous Steven Welby.
Dazzled by Steven’s charisma, Maddy finds herself agreeing to accompany him on a European film tour, leaving everything behind--including Dan. Despite the nagging rumors that Steven Welby is gay, Maddy can’t help but fall for him and all it takes is one text for her ties with Dan to be severed. As she sees it, Dan is still on the local, she’s on the express. Within months, Steven and Maddy are married, and Maddy’s life becomes a whirl of dinners, parties, and premieres.
Yet soon the glamour and excitement of life with a megastar begins to wear off, and the first seeds of doubt are planted in her head: the sex is infrequent and no fun, and the rumors are building about Steven’s lusty dalliances with attractive young men, and he is always off on long weekends with nothing to offer but fishy excuses. Questions bounce around her head until finally she comes to the biting realization that she was deliberately cast in this role—far from a glamorous Hollywood wife and rising actress, she’s just a beard to a not-so-secretly gay movie star. As if things couldn’t get worse, a tragic event sends Maddy into a spiral of grief and she’s left with little strength to save herself from her fraudulent marriage.

Amy Sohn is the author of the novels Prospect Park West, Motherland, Run Catch Kiss, and My Old Man. Her articles have appeared in New York, Harper’s Bazaar, Playboy, and The Nation. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.
Available products
Book

Published 2014-07-01 by Simon & Schuster

Book

Published 2014-07-01 by Simon & Schuster

Comments

Amy Sohn peels back the tabloid curtain and portrays, in granular detail, the emotional and vocational machinations of a made-in-Hollywood marriage. The Actress is a riveting and frothy novel.

Utterly engrossing from first page to last, The Actress is the best kind of page-turner. Beautifully written, acutely observed, and just plain delicious. I couldn't put it down.

In the story of Maddy Freed, indie actress goneHollywood A-list, Amy Sohn delivers at once a serious Bildungsroman and asurreptitious pleasure. The Actress is juicy and addictive, aJamesian Page Six of a novel.

Amy Sohn turns her razor-sharp eye on stardom in this sexy and engaging novel. The Actress delves deep into the nature of love and marriage, and offers a behind-the-scenes studio tour of Hollywood to boot.

Charismatic, sophisticated and beguiling, The Actress unfurls as seamlessly as a red carpet on opening night. Amy Sohn has written a textured, fresh take on classic, incendiary Hollywood tropes—the closeted leading man, arranged marriage, ambitious ingénues, ruthless agents—that is also a relatable, nuanced story of love and marriage. The Actress is an intelligent and humane novel that manages to civilize Hollywood while honoring its often overlooked complexities and still leaving its wicked vitality intact.

Amy Sohn’s unputdownable The Actress is like Henry James crossbred with the very best of US Weekly. An addictive saga of love, lust, fame, and friendship centered on a fascinating question: are we who we pretend to be?

Fun, funny, steamy, and unputdownable.

Summer reading list Read more...

The turbulent career of a Hollywood star, from the indie film festival to the red carpet to the lonely bedroom in the mansion. Read more...