Hell yeah, Eric Roberts has written a book!

A friend of mine recently sent me Eric Roberts’s just published autobiography as a gift.  I was excited because, as any of our regular readers know, I am a huge fan of the insanely busy Eric Roberts.  That said, I wasn’t really expecting much from the book because most Hollywood autobiographies that I’ve read have had a tendency to be a bit dry.  Often times, the author (or their ghost writer, as the case may be) is either too concerned about not offending anyone or too bitter about the state of their career to really provide much honest insight into their life or their chosen profession.

Eric Roberts, however, is the exception to the rule.  Runaway Train is a fascinating read.  Roberts comes across as being very honest about his career, his demons, his family, and his compulsive need to always be working.  Roberts admits to being a workaholic but, as he explains it, it’s better to be addicted to acting than to be addicted to cocaine.  And I have to say that I think he has a point there.

Roberts writes about his dysfunctional childhood, his time as a star, and his more recent career as an actor who is willing to appear in just about everything.  He writes about his addictions and how they almost ruined his life.  He writes about his marriage to Eliza and fully takes responsibility for all the times that he’s screwed up.  (Roberts screwing up is a recurring theme throughout the book, almost to the extent that you just want to give the guy a hug and tell him to stop being so hard on himself.)  He writes about the time that he spent as a patient of Dr. Drew on Celebrity Rehab.  (In perhaps the book’s funniest moment, he realizes that he needs to be addicted to something if he’s going to go on Celebrity Rehab.  Eventually, he agrees to go on the show for help with his marijuana addiction, despite Roberts belief, which I agree with, that you can’t actually get addicted to marijuana.)  Roberts writes about some of his films, though he obviously can’t write about all 700 of them.  So, while there is no Top Gunner trivia, there are three pretty interesting chapters devoted to Star 80, The Pope of Greenwich Village, and Runaway Train.

Roberts does write about other celebrities, though he does so in a way that is neither petty nor obsequious.  He writes about his friendship with Robin Williams with an honesty that few other celebs would be willing to risk.  Danny Trejo, Eddie Bunker, Mickey Rourke, Christopher Walken, Sterling Hayden, Doug Kenney, Sharon Stone, Rod Steiger, and Sylvester Stallone all show up at one point or another.  And yes, Eric Roberts does write about his relationship with both his sister Julia and his daughter, Emma.  Eric is open about he and Julia having been occasionally estranged but he manages to do so in a way that protects everyone’s privacy.  One might never expect this from some of the roles that he’s played but Eric Roberts comes across as being a pretty classy, if somewhat eccentric, guy.

I loved this memoir.  I recommend it to all of you.