Take Your Shirt Off and Cry: A Memoir of Near-Fame Experiences

Take Your Shirt Off and Cry is a book that I paradoxically did not want to finish but couldn't put down. Normally this feeling comes when I am reading books full of suspense or mystery, like Dan Brown's Angels and Demons, where every sentence carries you forward so that before you know it the afternoon has passed. It rarely happens with a memoir, but Nancy Balbirer has written a book so compelling I was actually yelled at by a passing car as I walked down the streets of Manhattan for reading while I crossed the street. I simply couldn't put it down. At first glance it appears as though this is a book about failed dreams, disappointment and the harsh realities of the ugly, ugly entertainment business (and it is a business). But it ultimately becomes something much more. As we follow Nancy's journey she reveals truths about self-discovery, tenacity, finding happiness without compromise and realizing that humor and gusto should not be laid at the alter of success. This hilarious, often touching memoir gives the talented Ms. Balbirer the last laugh after all.

In Take Your Shirt Off and Cry, Nancy Balbirer gives us a tour of her acting days, from studying with David Mamet, auditioning for Saturday Night Live with her Debra Winger impersonation, guest starring on Seinfeld, and rooming with a pre-fame Jennifer Aniston. She could be bitter about many things, from Aniston nixing her from a guest spot on Friends to waiting two days in a Chicago hotel room to audition for Lorne Michaels (it never happens) to not "making it" in the way she'd hoped, but instead of bitter, she can laugh at herself, and her former profession. Balbirer distills the comic relief in her years of off-off Broadway shows, her father's bemused response to said shows, and the pretentiousness with which she, and her peers, took their roles. Balbirer's romantic relapses also have a starring role here, notably her attempts to just be friends with Ned, her acting coach. Out of all the people she portrays, including her dismissive father and drama-loving mother, Ned is the one who is the most "a character," the one who you want to physically drag her away from, the one who always says seemingly the opposite of what he means. He's the perpetually clueless guy who really just wants to get in her pants but pretends otherwise. They even split up and don't speak for years and wind up back together, and Balbirer, and the reader, want to think he's changed, but he hasn't. Balbier's descriptions of her family are heartwarming, at least, will be to anyone who doesn't come from a picture-perfect one. When a producer tells her to change her one-woman show into a version of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, she muses: "My family popped into my head. I saw us all together at Christmas, the one time a year when everyone got together. I saw everyone as usual barely able to contain their contempt for one another, trading obligatory gifts, insults, and hostile remarks while pill-popping downers or tossing back drink after drink to numb out." (It gets worse from thereæor, for the reader, better.) Balbirer's character studies reveal as much about her as they do about the LA entertainment types she meets. In "Take Fountain," she befriends a woman who many, including the author, see as a has-been, a woman past her prime who, even when she gets a part on Broadway, winds up returning to near-obscurity. Yet Gigi, with her perennially positive attitude, is a powerful presence, one who teaches not by what she says so much as what she doesn't. In some ways, when Balbirer meets her husband, it has a sort of fairy tale ending. After so many losers, here's her knight. Yet the real story here is deeper. Balbirer constantly looks back at who she was, and, perhaps is. "The girl with the hair in her face," as she sees herself in a photo in the New York Times. This book is definitely about acting, about Hollywood, about fame, but it's also about art, passion, and love. And psychics. And, yes, Jennifer Aniston. It works if you just want to read for the celebrity tidbits, but i

wow - I just read this book cover to cover... literally couldn't put it down. The book glides on greased wheels - it flows; at times heartbreaking, at times laugh-out-loud funny, but always insightful and thought-provoking. Although the NY and LA actor-scene is the backdrop, this book is really about self-discovery... what's most remarkable is the depth that Nancy manages to tap into in the midst of all this superficiality; this is NOT the tmz/hills/sex & the city BS. Nancy is east coast all the way: real, smart, with a super-sharp wit and dark humor. She "busts balls" and is vulnerable and self-aware and honest, honest, honest. Buy a stack: one for you, one for your mom, one for your sister and your babysitter, and maybe that dbag ex-boyfriend who mistook your tears for weakness : )

Seriously. A painfully true drive-thru the hell-and heaven- of the L.A. acting world. And some of the NY acting world too. Insightful, painful, funny and honest. The pain of it ALMOST makes fame seem like a desirable alternative. A loving look at a sometimes painful experience, done with great wit and old Hollywood style.

Take Your Shirt Off And Cry was a delicious read -- graceful, sensitive and hysterically funny. Balbirer's wry perspective on her own life is refreshing and she deftly (and compassionately) captures the maddening entertainment industry, mysoginistic directors, brutish agents and frenemies. It made me think about all of the dreams that don't come true, and the real lives that flourish in their place.