Actress Of A Certain Age by Jeff Hiller

Actress of a Certain Age - My Twenty-Year Trail to Overnight Success is the memoir of actor Jeff Hiller, a character player in many films and TV shows. Toiling in the trenches of show business, he awaited his breakthrough role, which came with three seasons of the HBO series Somebody Somewhere, for which he won the 2025 Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series.

A fan of celebrity memoirs (having read literally hundreds of them - extra enjoyable if you have read the same ones), he learned their common clichés and applies those here. He even names each chapter after the title of an actor's biography.

Friendly and humorous, this is about what it is like to not be famous - to claw, scrape, and fight your way to the lower middle rung of the ladder. Dreaming of being a TV star all his life, he was an awkward-looking gay li'l flower growing up in a religious Lutheran household in Texas and attending church groups every single day. With no friends at school, he was continually bullied and called the f-word. The call to be a pastor didn't pan out, and he tried social work (still called the f-word every day), even traveling to Namibia. Arriving in New York City on the Greyhound bus, holding his wide-brimmed hat close to his head with his white-gloved hand just to look up and see all the tall buildings, he learned to handle the rejection of humiliating auditions and even more humiliating side jobs he endured (like working at Olive Garden), always cooking up a scheme to keep his dream of acting alive. Hustling every day for twenty years brought him continual work as the bitchy gay in sitcoms and national exposure in commercials (still being called the f-word). A middle-aged ingénue at forty-five, he began to believe it was not going to happen for him despite roles in Broadway musicals, one-man shows, and working every night as a member of the famous Upright Citizens Brigade improv group for free. Then came the call to work with Bridget Everett on Somebody Somewhere playing the best friend everyone wished they had, in a show about connection, as if it was written for him.

His self-deprecating manner is comic, endearing, and belies his love of people. Through several failed relationships, he is now happily married, had his breakthrough, won the Emmy, is now completely happy, and nothing is wrong in his life, proving dreams don't have deadlines. Don't give up; you're not beaten yet.

2025 / Hardcover / 272 pages