How to Play for a Living - Sixty Years in the Life of a Working Actor

How to Play for a Living - Sixty Years in the Life of a Working Actor

Peter Jason, with Joie Davidow

200 pages

6x9 size

ISBN 9798905350634  $27

ISBN 9798905350641 hardback $38

"Entertaining and informative, a must read for both fledgling actors and film buffs."

— director JOHN CARPENTER

In this often-hilarious memoir, actor Peter Jason traces his six-decade journey, navigating Hollywood films, television, and the American theater, from summer stock and Carnegie Tech, dodging the Vietnam draft, to reinventing himself to survive a fiercely competitive industry. The book unfolds as a series of vivid, behind-the-scenes stories and lessons about craft, humility, sobriety, resilience, and the necessity of joy, illustrating his core philosophy that acting should be play, not work.

PETER JASON, one of the great character actors, appeared in more than two hundred movies and television shows, frequently working with directors Walter Hill, John Carpenter and Frank Marshall in a career stretching from Rio Lobo with John Wayne, Orson Welles's The Other Side of the Wind to Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, remembered for his roles in iconic films such as 48 Hrs., Prince of Darkness, Arachnophobia and They Live., and TV shows like NCIS. Deadwood and Baskets. He was also an accomplished voice actor, playing the fan-favorite character Dizzy in Gears of War.