Hollywood Hellraisers by Robert Sellers

Biographer Robert Sellers angles his spotlight on four of cinema's most celebrated rakes: Warren Beatty, who devoured women like a child falling on chocolate cake at a birthday party; Marlon Brando, a binge-eating method actor who refused to learn his lines; Jack Nicholson, who deserved the nickname the Great Seducer; and Dennis Hopper, a volatile study in drug-induced paranoia prone to brandishing loaded pistols on set. Full of gossipy anecdotes, it can at times read like a bumper issue of Nuts magazine – all blokey sarcasm and tittering innuendo – but it does manage to give nice insights into what drove these men. There are some woeful lapses in taste, and it has all the depth of a paddling pool, but that aside, Hellraisers is great fun.