Robert Shaw: The Price of Success

Robert Shaw is most celebrated today as the Oscar-nominated star in movies like From Russia with Love, A Man For All Seasons, The Sting and – most memorably of all – as Quint in the record-breaking Jaws.

His breakthrough came when Hollywood was experiencing something of a British Invasion. Sean Connery, Peter O’Toole, Vanessa Redgrave and Richard Burton were among the new stars. But Shaw was arguably more talented than any, a figure of extraordinary and wide-ranging promise. More than just a mesmerising actor on stage and screen, he was also a gifted writer. He wrote no less than six published novels (winning the Hawthornden Prize), while his plays include the acclaimed Man in The Glass Booth. The flipside to Shaw’s diverse abilities was his well-earned reputation as a hellraiser. A fiercely competitive man in all areas of his life, whether playing table tennis or drinking whisky, he emptied mini-bars, crashed Aston Martins, fathered nine children by three different women, made (and spent) a fortune, and set fire to Orson Welles’ house. He died at 51, having driven himself too hard, too fast, but unable to get past the tortured relationship to his father who had committed suicide when Shaw was just 11. Though his life ended tragically, it is fortunate that Shaw’s biographer is someone who knew him well, professionally and personally. Robert Shaw: The Price of Success is a perceptive, sympathetic, but unsparing portrait of the blessings and curses endowing this mercurial, enigmatic but deeply engaging man.

Author Biography

John French’s first job was as the house manager at the Royal Court Theatre in London. There he worked with Lindsay Anderson, Anthony Page and Bill Gaskill and actors like Paul Scofield, Rachel Roberts, Alan Bates, Diana Dors and Paul Eddington. A job at a theatrical agency followed. The agency looked after, among others, Sean Connery, Alan Bates, Sheila Hancock, Malcolm McDowell, Robert Shaw and Michael Crawford as well as screenwriters and directors. After three years John founded his own agency and went on to represent Robert, Julie Walters, Pete Postlethwaite, Zena Walker, Stephanie Beacham and film director Mike Newell. His own writing includes plays performed at the Soho Theatre, the King’s Head, the Battersea Arts Centre and many fringe venues. He has subsequently written over thirty novels (for Little Brown, Headline and Virgin) under various pseudonyms which have sold well over a million copies. In more recent years he has worked as script editor and writer on the CSI: Crime Scene Investigation TV series.