Watch Me by Anjelica Huston: book review

Watch Me (2014) is model and actor Anjelica Huston’s autobiography, and a continuation of her first book, A Story Lately Told (2013). She begins this book at the age of 21 in 1973, after leaving a 4-year relationship with a man 24 years older than her. She returns to the place where she was born: Los Angeles. She receives an invitation to a party at actor Jack Nicholson’s house. He asked her to stay the night. The relationship lasted until 1989.

The memoir begins slowly and disjointedly – mainly about what Jack Nicholson said or did. It is chronicled around Jack Nicholson and his movies – starting with The Passenger, when they met, to Chinatown, also starring her father at the time she moved in with Jack, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – and so on. It is more about Jack than her.

From chapter 9 the memoir gains momentum and more interest. It is here that she writes of her relationship with her father, the director, John Huston. He has emphysema and his health deteriorates. She also writes of his death in 1987.

Her writing improves when she writes of her movies and her life – not dependent on her love with Jack. It is more interesting when she discusses movies such as Prizzi’s Honor, The Addamms Family movies, and her Woody Allen films – up to Darjeeling Limited. Even when she meets and marries Mexican sculptor Robert Graham her identity remains intact. Their relationship from 1992 to his death in 2008 is detailed in a more fluid way than that of her time with Jack. She concludes her memoir with her current work and the next phase of her life in her sixties.

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