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Tarfumes.com - On The Couch
![On The Couch]()
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List Price: $34.95
Our Price: $7.18
Your Save: $ 27.77 ( 79% )
Availability: N/A
Manufacturer: Penguin Audio
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Audio CD
Dewey Decimal Number: 791.43028092
Format: Bargain Price
Label: Penguin Audio
Manufacturer: Penguin Audio
Number Of Items: 5
Publication Date: 2006-06-06
Publisher: Penguin Audio
Release Date: 2006-06-06
Studio: Penguin Audio
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Editorial Reviews:
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The most refreshingly candid celebrity memoir in years, from an actress who has always lived life on her own terms.
Known to millions as psychiatrist Dr. Jennifer Melfi on HBO's hit series The Sopranos, a role for which she has received multiple Emmy, Golden Globe, and Screen Actors Guild nominations, Lorraine Bracco is one of the most recognizable actresses working today. A glamorous and intelligent presence on both the big and small screen, as well as on the Broadway stage, it's hard to imagine that this formidable woman was once voted the "ugliest girl in the sixth grade." But with guts, determination, and a very good sense of humor, Lorraine Bracco triumphed-and did it her way.
Born in Brooklyn to an Italian-American father and a British mother, Bracco survived her ugly-duckling childhood to become a Wilhelmina model in Paris. On the Couch traces her rise from fledgling actress to star and wife of acting heavyweight Harvey Keitel; her film roles, including her Academy Award-nominated performance in Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas; the very public custody battle following her divorce from Keitel; and her glorious return on the series that proved, once and for all, that even mobsters get the blues.
In this engaging memoir, Lorraine opens up about her career, her marriages, her determination to be a good mother, and her refusal to be marginalized as an actress and a woman in a society obsessed with youth and beauty. She is also startlingly honest about her victory over depression, her willingness to seek treatment, and how she found her way again. And when she was cast on The Sopranos, yet another incredible new chapter began. Forthright, funny, and, at fifty, a woman of both uncommon beauty and intelligence, Lorraine Bracco knows what she wants out of life. In a conversational memoir as frank and candid as a heart-to-heart with an old friend, Lorraine Bracco's On the Couch delivers with all the force of this amazing woman's marvelous personality.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Lorraine Bracco
Comment: Slightly disappointted with this one.
started off full of promise about depression and her journey but i found it to be more about husband bashing. no doubt she married a less than desirable person but i wanted more about her journey and i dont believe it was all caused by him. depression is not something we catch because of who we are with, its part of who we are.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Warm, honest; mostly for Women in the Arts
Comment: Yes, women and men experience the same emotions, and self-help or professional help extends to all of us. This work shows that the actress who so brilliantly played Karen Hill and earned a permanent place as a Hollywood legend could spend untold hours retreating to the sofa while her millions of admirers drive to work, imagining themselves on a soundstage.
"On The Couch" is Bracco's own "open book", a saga running from the U.S.A. to France and back, from the home to "Therapeutic" Couch...to renewed confidence as a world artist.
Her distinctive, sensuous voice pervades every syllable, most effectively when she's describing a failed audition...or a successful audition she thought she failed. By the way, she is a wonderfully evocative writer, providing a new actress or actor a very serious and helpful guide to preparing for and landing a part, either for a soap opera or major motion picture. She suggests that the big names experience the same "job interview" apprehensiveness as any jobseeker.
Her love for her family is sensed at every mention, though it may seem strange that she didn't seem to temper this love with what is best for them: she describes a wildly unstable relationship with actor Harvey Keitel, and this might depress some of *his* fans, as she implies that the superstar has a dark, immoral, side; for all the macho posturing, still the scared kid from Hell's Kitchen, who seems hell bent on keeping all those around him off balance. She deeply appreciates his professional support while she rues her personal realtionship with him.
Of her own slippery judgements, well, moving in, with her children, with this guy in a chique but isolated and unsafe part of downtown, certainly implies impetuousness on her part. Her stability actually enabling his instability. [Gotta ask Dr. Melfi if I'm right about that one].
The book is permeated with references to The Sopranos, lines from the show used as thematic introductions to the chapters.
There are the expected mentions of Scorsese's "Goodfellas" and a perhaps unexpected statement by Lorraine that despite the romantic trappings, Liotta and Bracco were definitely *not* Gable and Leigh, in her mind. She says that immoral, delusional people can only go down.
The many photographs are well-selected and it seems that the author wanted more of a family scrapbook effect than a publicity vehicle. Her astonishing beauty and expressiveness are revealed famously through these finely mounted photos. They all reveal an individual whose ultimate message is to get *off* the Couch - if it takes another Couch to realize that move, go for it. But don't bring along a bag of potato chips.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Enter Whinning
Comment: When you see Lorraine Bracco on screen she steals your heart, whether it in against Sean Connery in Medicine Man to facing Tony Soprano on the couch..she knows how to act.
Now when recanting an abridgement of her own audio biography, why does she morfs into a clone of Fran Drescher? For a actress of her talent to whine out her own words is unproffessional.
There is an old adage, a person should not narrate his or her biography to audio. In the case of this book, they are correct. Bracco's true life tale is interesting at best.
However in her vocal hands, it shows no depth. With her whinning voice, In the audio neighborhood where Roseanne Barr and Fran Drescher have previous tread, Bracco's lifeless voice is recanting her story depresses the listenership very easy
I give it 3 stars for the biography itself..and not its narrator
Bennet Pomerantz AUDIOWORLD
Customer Rating:
Summary: Just what I needed!
Comment: This was a great book for myself and any woman of any age who is feeling unfullfilled. I felt like Lorraine was speaking directly to me at times. Even though our lives are extremley different I could relate very well to everything she is saying. My daughter is only in Kindergarten right now but when she gets old enought this is definitley a book I will save for her to read. Thanks Lorraine!
Customer Rating:
Summary: On The Couch
Comment: I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Good points on situational depression.
Interesting autobiography. Good points regarding custodial parent's rights.
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