Loitering With Intent: The Apprentice
The popular actor describes his youth in northern England, the difficulty of a wartime childhood, his education, and his adventures as a young man on the loose in London
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In early 1953 O'Toole, fresh from stints as a steeplejack, photographer trainee, and journalist, began studies at London's prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, training grounds for many of England's most respected actors. The Apprentice is his affectionate, beguiling, and, above all, funny account of his student life there, from the parties and money-making schemes (including selling balloons and constructing toy cars) to pub-crawling and, of course, the always challenging - and occasionally eccentric - RADA curriculum itself. O'Toole takes readers with him into Stretcher Fletcher's torturous ballet classes, and into Miss Boalth's movement class, in which O'Toole drifted like a bubble while his classmate Albert Finney spun around like a leaf.We follow the young student through rehearsals and performances, successes and flops, and into the very heart of the plays themselves, as only a great actor can reveal them. We meet the gifted professionals who influenced him, as well as the young American woman who became the center of his attentions. In his attempts to win the affection and respect of this dark-haired beauty, the fledgling actor reveals himself to be more the shy romantic than the image of the raffish man-about-town he cultivated on stage and in films.
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