You know him from his breakout role as Hank Kingsley from The Larry Sanders Show, his outrageous turn as George Bluth on Arrested Development, and his Emmy Award-winning performance as Maura Pfefferman on Transparent. A Broadway star, a television legend, an accomplished screen actor whose singular wit and heartrending performances have been entertaining audiences for more than four decades, but the question remains: who is Jeffrey Tambor?
In his illuminating, often hilarious, and always unflinchingly honest book, Are You Anybody?: A Memoir, Tambor looks back at the key moments in his life that taught him about creativity and play and pain and fear. The son of what you might call “eccentric” Russian and Hungarian Jewish parents, Tambor grew up in San Francisco a husky kid with a lisp who suffered in his “otherness,” and found salvation in the theater.
While he learned his art from the best of the best—Al Pacino, George C. Scott, Garry Shandling, Jill Soloway–he also introduces his many unexpected teachers, from the nameless man in a Detroit bookstore who gave him the love of reading, to his young children who (at this ridiculously late stage in his life) have re-introduced him to play and bravery.
Tambor shares the triumph of landing his first Broadway role, but not before experiencing the humbling that is commercial work (and how even saying “my socks don’t cling” can prove a challenge). He invites you behind the scenes of his wildly successful television shows, but he doesn’t leave out the pit stops he made at addiction, Scientology, and what it feels like to get fourth billing after Sylvia the Seal on The Love Boat.
Jeffrey Tambor is an accomplished actor known for his unforgettable comedic roles on HBO’s The Larry Sanders Show, the long-running Fox series Arrested Development, and the Golden Globe Award-winning Transparent, for which he has won Golden Globe and Emmy Awards. Tambor lives in Los Angeles, California.
