Reviews
Praise for Rick Lenz as an actor, playwright and North of Hollywood author
"An actor's intimate, sometimes hilarious, sometimes touching, and always honest account of making a living while living next to Hollywood legends."
—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"I could relate to this story ... I was totally engaged with North of Hollywood, start to finish. Sometimes it felt like Rick Lenz wasn’t just “opening the kimono”, as they say in business, but was actually peeling off his skin. I admire his courage in telling it."
—SCOTT CAMPBELL, AUTHOR OF "TOUCHED" AND "AFTERMATH"
“Rick, the book looks great and is exactly what you should have written from the beginning. I’m totally happy.”
—BRET EASTON ELLIS, AUTHOR, “LESS THAN ZERO”
“I love the book! Insightful, honest, wise, and charming. A wonderful read!”
— BERNARD SLADE, PLAYWRIGHT, “SAME TIME, NEXT YEAR”
“North of Hollywood gave me more satisfaction than any celebrity memoir or Hollywood insider book I’ve ever read! Yes, as a pop-culture junkie I drooled over the movie and TV anecdotes, but the best parts, for me, are the introspective passages. Rick Lenz’s book reads like a nonfiction novel. It is, by turns, fall-on-the floor funny and graveyard-serious, a page-turner with a brain. This is an excitingly original book overflowing with lyrical power that I can’t compare to anything else I’ve ever read. His voice is endlessly thought provoking and entertaining. I LIKE THIS BOOK! in an over-the-top, Sally Field, kinda way.
—KEVIN COOK, WRITER AND EDITOR
"The talented actor, Rick Lenz , is always, charming, funny and, in his roles, a little bit naïve. The writer, Rick Lenz, is equally talented, charming, funny but the naivety has become a perceptive and poignant wisdom as he examines his life as an actor, a husband, a father and the vicissitudes of all three. An essential book for anyone who has ever said they want to be an actor and for anyone who was lucky enough not to. Compulsively readable!"
— Michael Kahn, the Artistic Director of the Shakespeare Theater in Washington D.C. and former Head of Drama at Julliard.
"A touching, bittersweet remembrance of a workaday career in acting ... He writes with self-punishing honesty ... documents a career longevity that is breathtaking. ... His story is more about self-acceptance than glory, and readers will cheer as he reaches that realization himself."
—KIRKUS REVIEWS
“North of Hollywood should be required reading for anyone who aspires to the acting life in New York and the City of Angels. Enchantingly written with a sure hand and a knowing eye, Rick Lenz reveals with enormous poignancy and gleeful insight what it has taken to make one real life work while pursuing the Hollywood dream.”
—ELIZABETH FORSYTHE HAILEY, AUTHOR OF A WOMAN OF INDEPENDENT MEANS
“A talented playwright”
—MEL GUSSOW, NEW YORK TIMES
“Richard Lenz, in the role of Lawrence Vail—a role Kaufman reserved for himself in the original Broadway production—gives the evening its very finest moments as he tries to make sense out of the nonsense.”
—SYLVIE DRAKE, LOS ANGELES TIMES, REVIEW OF ‘ONCE IN A LIFETIME’ (MARK TAPER FORUM)
“Tall expressive leading man Rick Lenz has steadfastly avoided pigeonholing as a ‘type,’ playing gunslingers, victims, villains, patient husbands, insensitive fools, intellectuals, and even a wimpy murder-mystery fanatic in the Hallmark remake of Hitchcock's ‘Shadow of a Doubt.’”
—HAL ERICKSON OF ALL MOVIE GUIDE
“Flawlessly written and performed by Rick Lenz, ‘Last Class’ is a dream of a piece.”
—JACKIE HORWITZ, LOS ANGELES NEWS
“‘The Epic of Buster Friend’ by Richard Lenz is theatrical magic.”
—RICHARD TINO, THE STRATFORD BARD
“I’m blessed with Rick Lenz, who is a hell of a good actor.”
—RICHARD BOONE, AS THEY FILMED ‘HEC RAMSEY,’ TO THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
