Audio: Patti LuPone Reads Segments From New Memoir

As BroadwayWorld has previously reported, Crown Publishing Group will release Patti LuPone: A Memoir on September 14th, 2010.

The legendary Patti LuPone is one of the theatre's most beloved leading ladies. Now she lays it all bare, sharing the intimate story of her life both onstage and off--through the dizzying highs and darkest lows--with the humor and outspokenness that have become her trademarks.

To hear a preview of LuPone's book delivered by the star herself, click here.

With nearly 100 photographs, including an 8-page four-color insert, and illuminating details about the life of a working actor, from inspired costars and demanding directors to her distinct perspective on how she developed and honed her Tony Award-winning performances, Patti LuPone: A Memoir is as inspirational as it is entertaining. And though the title might say "a memoir," this is ultimately a love letter to the theatre by a unique American artist.

Raised on Long Island's North Shore, Patti discovered her calling at the age of four and knew that she was destined for the stage. A prodigiously gifted child, she was one of only 36 young actors chosen for the inaugural class of The Juilliard School's Drama Division, where she fought near-constant criticism from her instructors, and here describes those early years with disarming frankness.

From the heady days of her early twenties-crisscrossing the country as a founding member of the classical repertory theatre ensemble, The Acting Company--to her early success on Broadway, her four-year stint as Libby Thacher on the television series Life Goes On, her loving marriage to Matt Johnston, and much, much more, Patti chronicles her professional and personal life with inimitable candor and wit.

With its insightful retrospective of her career-defining turns, both on Broadway and abroad, in Evita, Les Misérables, Anything Goes, Sunset Boulevard, Sweeney Todd, and Gypsy, Patti LuPone: A Memoir reveals the artist's deeply felt passion for music and the theatre and is, in the end, the compelling and quintessential tale of an exceptional life well lived.

Patti LuPone's performance career has spanned 30 years and partnerships with such luminaries as Mandy Patinkin, David Mamet, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Stephen Sondheim. The powerhouse performer recently won the Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle and Drama League's Best Actress in a Musical Award for her role as Mama Rose in the critically-acclaimed Broadway production of the Jule Styne-Stephen Sondheim-Arthur Laurents musical Gypsy.

LuPone's other recent stage credits include her debut with the Los Angeles Opera in Kurt Weill's Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny; the world premiere of Jake Heggie's new opera To Hell and Back with San Francisco's Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra; Mrs. Lovett in John Doyle's award-winning Broadway production of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd (a role which garnered her Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle Award nominations for Best Actress in a Musical and a Drama League Award for Outstanding Contribution to Musical Theatre); a critically-acclaimed performance as Fosca in a concert version of Stephen Sondheim's Passion, which was also broadcast on PBS' Live From Lincoln Center; and a multi-city tour of her theatrical concert "Matters of the Heart." She is currently on tour with Mandy Patinkin in a special concert 'An Evening with Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin.'

To get more info and buy a copy of the book visit http://www.amazon.com/Patti-LuPone-Memoir-Lupone/dp/0307460738/