1. – Peter Sellers, Being There, 1979. Sellers courted the book’s author for years until he saw the light. “He understood Chauncey Gardiner better than I did, for good reason… He has no interior life. No sense of himself. He is… entirely defined by society, which perceives him for what he is not.” Apart from being as vain and paranoid as each other, the delay, as Sellers saw it, was that Kosinski wanted to play Chance, himself. “That’s why he wrote it for a young man of Olympian, god-like beauty. I saw Chauncey Gardiner as a plump figure, pallid, unexercised from sitting around and watching television. Too old? A lot of people said that. I just told them: You’re wrong, I’m right.” (With added adjectives…)The Polish writer tried acting twice – Reds, 1981; Religion, Inc, 1988 – and commnitted suicide (by suffocation) ten years later.
Usual occupation: AuthorBirth year: 1933Death year: 1991Other name: Casting Calls: 1