My search for love and art. Gene Wilder defined film comedy in the 1970s and '80s, starring in everything from The Producers to Blazing Saddles and See No Evil, Hear No Evil.
This is no traditional autobiography, but an intelligent, quirky, humorous account of key events that have affected him - as the subtitle puts it, Kiss Me Like a Stranger records Wilder's search for love and art.
In this brilliantly written book, he gives a great insight into the creative process on stage and screen. He discusses his experiences of working with the very best of movie talent, including Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, Sidney Poitier and Richard Pryor, and tells how he developed his own unique style from his early days at The Actors' Studio with Lee Strasberg.
Among other incidents, he describes his time in the UK, a place for which he has great fondness, studying at the Old Vic Theatre School in Bristol. During this period he came top of his class at fencing and door-stepped Sir John Gielgud to ask him to explain the use of iambic pentametre.
Wilder also talks amusingly about his failed love life off-screen - including four marriages - and is also candid about much darker times, such as the death of his third wife, comedienne Gilda Radner, from cancer and of his own battle with the disease, which he's now come through.
