In this prickly autobiography, the iconic actress is almost as hard-nosed toward lovers as her filmic alter -ego was toward enemies. Grier recalls a flamboyant career, from B-movie starlet in Women in Cages
through blaxploitation diva in Foxy Brown
to Tarantino muse in Jackie Brown
, all of it shaped by a rigorous Stanislavskian method. (Her self-transformation into a strung-out killer prostitute for an audition almost got her arrested by the NYPD.) Grier nods to the feminist and black power movements that inspired her screen persona as a glamorous badass shotgunning a white and/or male power structure—Hollywood's answer to Angela Davis—while distancing herself from the myth: deep down she's a Colorado farm girl, scarred by two rapes, who loves horses. But there's a resemblance to her onscreen persona in her tough, wary attitude toward domineering boyfriends like Kareem Abdul Jabbar, who futilely tried to convert her into a submissive Muslim wife, and comedian Freddie Prinze, whose suicide garners less space and pathos than does the death of her dog. “What harm would it do to say yes and keep on watching his behavior?” she strategizes when a suitor presents an engagement ring. (Apr. 28)
