Billie Whitelaw

Billie Whitelaw, Jean Martin and others share their memories of the renowned modern playwrightI'll never cease to be amazed by the wealth of material freely available on Youtube. Yesterday afternoon I chanced upon the above clip, a nine-minute excerpt from a documentary where a number of Samuel Beckett's friends and colleagues are interviewed.Samuel Beckett with the original cast of En attendant Godot (Waiting for Godot)The first, lengthy part of the clip begins with Jean Martin, who played...Read Full Story

In a 2007 issue of Hyperion, Mark Daniel Cohen discusses the British Library release of Samuel Beckett's Works for Radio: The Original Broadcasts:Samuel Beckett: Works for Radio: The Original Broadcasts is a four-CD set of recordings of the five works Beckett wrote specifically for radio performance: All That Fall, Embers, Words and Music, Cascando and Rough for Radio. It includes as well a recording of The Old Tune, Beckett’s translation of Robert Pinget’s La Manivelle, and a monologue...Read Full Story

Your guide to this week's best cultural linksThere Will Be Blood, shown as part of the Rolling Roadshow film festivalLiterature:Penguin Books celebrates 75 yearsJ. D. Salinger: A rare photograph of the reclusive American author, erm, putting on his socksFyodor Dostoyevsky: Quoted on politics and personal vanityOxfam Used Books: Summer Sale beginsJack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg: A collection of their correspondence is publishedGabriel Josipovici: Criticism of British novelists, including Ian...Read Full Story

In an autobiography that chronicles twenty-five years as Samuel Beckett's favourite actress, Billie Whitelaw remembers meeting the Irish playwright for the first time:What happened next went like this, but I have to say that I'm taking more than a little poetic licence in reconstructing this event. George Devine had a friend in Paris, a fairly bizarre writer called Samuel Beckett. A play of his had just opened in Germany which had parts for two women and one man. The perfect substitute...Read Full Story

Rare feature-length documentary on the Nobel Prize-winning writer Samuel BeckettThis incredibly rare television documentary includes interviews with a number of Beckett's friends, colleagues and followers. Among those interviewed are: Raymond Federman, Hugh Kenner, Steve Martin, Edward Albee, Stanley Gontarski, John Calder, Barney Rosset and, in a round-a-bout way, Samuel Beckett himself. The film also includes footage of a number of Beckett productions, including Steve Martin and Robin...Read Full Story

Nicholas Lezard has reviewed a recent production of Samuel Beckett's Not I, performed as part of the South Bank's 2009 London Literature Festival. The performance was followed by a short film in which Billie Whitelaw, too unwell to appear in person, discussed the difficulty of the role and her memories of Beckett's guidance as director. Lezard seems to have had an enjoyable evening:I defy anyone to come up with a more intense theatrical experience than Samuel Beckett's Not I. In otherwise...Read Full Story

Billie Whitelaw (born June 6, 1932 in Coventry, Warwickshire, England) is a distinguished British actress.She trained at RADA and made her stage debut in 1950 and her film debut in 1953, soon becoming ...Read Full Story

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