My Extraordinary Ordinary Life - Spacek

Sissy Spacek was born in a little town in Texas. Born into a family with two older brothers, she quickly became a typical 60's tomboy growing up in an idyllic southern town.

When she reached her teen years, Sissy discovered a love for music and learned how to play the guitar. At seventeen, she was given the opportunity to visit New York to stay with some relatives. She fell in love.

With her family's consent (her parents paid for some of her living costs rather than college), she returned to New York with only a small bag and two guitars. But after several year, her music career had not panned out exactly as he had hoped. An opportunity arose for her to act in a movie. She took it and the rest is history.

Spacek's memoir reads like a novel. The reader can not help but experience her childhood themselves - envisioning themselves playing with a young Sissy in her backyard, sitting and watching Sissy learn to play her guitar, and shedding a tear as Sissy's older brother succumbs to leukemia. I could not help but reread sections, just to experience that down-home, small-town once again.

Spacek shares the stories behind meeting and falling in love with her husband Jack, and his favorite dog Five. She tells tells how their relationship blossomed as both of their careers developed from the ground up and shares her experiences developing her acting career with Carrie and Coal Miner's Daughter. She speaks of her two beautiful daughters and their development into intelligent, talented women.

If this book has one failing, it is that readers will likely want, and expect, more information about her movies and experiences filming them. But Spacek talks only sparingly of her movies beyond her career start (no mention of 'Night Mother, my absolute Spacek favorite) and focuses more on her life as it developed outside of Hollywood. But that is, perhaps, the essence of Sissy Spacek. That her fame and fortune is but an addition to the important things in life - her childhood and family, her loving husband and children, her pets and home.

This book is absolutely lovely and well worth the read, truly an "extraordinary ordinary" memoir!

4/5- Great. Push it on your friends and family.