Runaway Train, or The Story Of My Life So Far is the frank memoir of actor Eric Roberts. Will it always be added that he is the brother of movie star Julia Roberts, and the father of actor Emma Roberts?
Yes, it will.
He lived a tumultuous personal life as a functioning drug addict yet still managed some great film performances.
"This is a book of scar tissue, the scars I can live with, and the scars that I hide".
Strained relationships are the norm, but he is open enough to admit his part, and you can clearly see he was difficult to be around. For many years estranged from his sisters and daughter, they have an even relationship now.
He grew up in Georgia with parents who were controlling, alcoholic, and depressed. Although his father ran an acting school, his lifelong advice to Eric was demeaning and cruel. Subsequently he sought out father figures, even an agent who sabotaged him. Eleven years older than his sisters, he suffered a childhood they escaped when the parents divorced. He points out in a family of dysfunction, there is often a damaged child, and another who smiles and says everything is fine.
Eric was an established actor before Julia became a superstar in 1990, which he looks at with admiration and envy. It's hard to become a fame-adjacent family member. His break out film was King of the Gypsies (1978) followed by a career defining role in Bob Fosse's Star 80, playing a predatory and sleazy murderer, typecasting him as a heavy. After the acclaimed The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984), he gave an Oscar-nominated performance in the terrific Runaway Train (1985), despite running on cocaine.
All day. Every day. For years.
He was an addict from 1979 to 1992, continually ending anecdotes with how he burned bridges with cast and crew. His long relationship with actress Sandy Dennis was strained as well, including a car crash in 1981 which left him in a coma for days, learning to walk and talk again, not knowing if the crash induced the coma, or the overload of cocaine. There is a lot about his wife Eliza, his sisters, and the jobs he let go (turning Scorsese down for The Last Temptation of Christ).
He is proud to be a working actor, although appearing in over 700 films, they are mostly non-theatrical B films, he can shoot two or three in a day. There is also his time on the TV show Celebrity Rehab. I would have preferred more film stories, such as his role in one of my favourite thrillers, the Hitchcock inspired Final Analysis (1992) with Richard Gere and Kim Basinger, in which Kim achieves the feat of outperforming Eric in scenery chewing.
This seems a cathartic memoir, as he comes around from I don't know why people left me, to drug addicts are hard to be around. It's hard to believe he maintains such a diverse career (even in big films like The Dark Knight), despite it all.
This is for fans of his work, but also of note to addicts, and the family of those recovering.
I enjoyed it.
2024 / Hardcover / 304 pages
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