Author of the week: Penny Marshall

last updated 8 January 2015

Penny Marshall lives a charmed life—and has written a memoir to prove it, said Jen Yamato in Movieline.com. Three years after being diagnosed with both lung cancer and a brain tumor, the 68-year-old director and comedienne is healthy and strong again, but tired of people thinking they’ve already read her obituary. “The rags still say, ‘She’s dying,’” Marshall says. “That’s not helping me get work!” In My Mother Was Nuts, the former Laverne & Shirley star writes candidly about abortions and miscarriages, her past use of recreational drugs, her relationships with Rob Reiner and Art Garfunkel, and the making of such hit films as Big and A League of Their Own. “You want to set the record straight on certain things,” she says. “Because there are so many rumors.”

Reading Marshall’s book, you get the feeling that she’s projecting a bit with the title she chose, said Craig Wilson in USA Today. “Yeah, I’m nuts, too,” Marshall admits. “But it came from my mother.” The ’70s and ’80s were wild times for the TV star, full of partying as well as pregnancies she could link to no obvious fathers. “I thought it was immaculate conception,” she jokes. Her marriage to Reiner didn’t last, but they “laughed a lot,” she says. Then there was the time she got Garfunkel and Paul Simon to sing together in her apartment. “I didn’t know their problems,” she says. “I asked them to play, and it was magical.” Looking back, she has only one regret. “I regret I got cancer,” she says.