Take Your Shirt Off and Cry

A Memoir of Near-Fame Experiences

By Nancy Balbirer

A laugh-till-you-cry account of the head-banging frustrations and outrageous ironies that litter the path to stardom.

Without sparing the embarrassing details, Balbirer chronicles the two decades she spent as a struggling actress in the trenches of show business. From the searing purist tutelage of David Mamet at NYU Drama School ("In show business, women who are lucky enough to find employment are asked to do only two things in every role they ever play: take your shirt off and cry") to her bizarre 1 AM Saturday Night Live audition for Lorne Michael, Balbirer recounts her sometimes disappointing, sometimes painful, and always bizarre adventures. Among the stories in Take Your Shirt Off and Cry is "Friendly Fire," which is about Nancy's friendship and eventual falling out with a good friend who went on to become a huge star with a top-rated sitcom. Fame may not have knocked on her door, but it certainly slept on her couch. Take your Shirt Off and Cry is an utterly engaging, deeply personal, and absurdly comic memoir from a one-of-a-kind talent.

Reviews for Take your Shirt Off and Cry

“Turning her poor-little-L.A. girl material into a read this witty, reflective and charming takes real talent; if there's any justice, that talent will find the fame it deserves among the book buying public.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review Read full review.

It is a fact of life seldom discussed in our celebrity-mad media: most actors do not become either rich or famous. Balbirer revels in her failure in this witty, poignant, exceedingly well-written memoir chronicling the ups and downs (mostly downs) of a trained, hardworking actress who always seems on the cusp of greatness but who nevertheless always fails to make the grade. Starting with her glory days in NYU’s theater program, Balbirer charts her many adventures in off- and off-off-Broadway, on television (where, for a time, she appeared on MTV’s popular Remote Control), and later in Hollywood. Gossip mongers will find her stories of life in la-la land especially fascinating, and among them, in particular, her heartbreaking tale of being cast as a guest star and then cut from an unnamed popular 1990s sitcom (not Seinfeld; she was on Seinfeld several times) at the insistence of her friend “Jane,” one of the show’s highly paid stars. The irony is that, if Balbirer’s book proves as popular as her autobiographical one-woman show I Slept with Jack Kerouac and Other Stories, she may find fame and fortune by recounting the myriad ways she failed to achieve them.—Booklist, starred review.

“Honest and funny…. Take Your Shirt Off and Cry is the kind of book anyone, regardless of their interest in Hollywood or lack thereof, can appreciate and enjoy.”—Buffalo News. Read full review.

Buy Now

Take Your Shirt Off and Cry

A Memoir of Near-Fame Experiences