Most People Are Other People

Out of Print

Most people are other people:
Portraits of actors from Britain and Ireland
Stuart Pearson Wright
Foreword by John Hurt, an interview with Timothy Spall and a short story by Miranda Bowen

Stuart Pearson Wright's love of the theatre is the inspiration behind these beautifully sensitive and often vulnerable drawings featuring an 'A' list cast of this country's finest actors, from the leading giants including John Hurt, Jeremy Irons, Sir Michael Gambon, Fiona Shaw and Timothy Spall to a cast of established and emerging talents from the world of classical theatre, film and the nation's favourite sit-coms, including Matthew Macfadyen, Keeley Hawes, Indira Varma and Daniel Radcliffe.

These naturalistic portraits reveal actors in private moments off-stage and out of character, in the artist's studio or else in theatre dressing rooms between performances. They beg the question: Are we ever not performing ? If actors are able to move between multiple fluid identities at will, what does that say about human nature? Can anything we say or do ever be authentic ? Are these actors really out of character as they sit for their portraits?

Stuart Pearson Wright is the winner of the BP Portrait Award 2001 for Gallus Gallus With Still Life and Presidents or the now infamous 'dead chicken' painting. In 2003 he painted the controversial naked portrait of Prince Philip and in 2005 the Portrait Gallery unveiled the hugely popular commission of J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series. He has won numerous other awards and has exhibited nationally.

260 x 220mm, 80 pages, 47 illustrations, ISBN 0 95524 270 3, £12.99 (paperback) Gallery Exclusive, Published January 2006, Published by Saveloy Press

Published to accompany a display of over forty drawings at the National Portrait Gallery (Room 37a) until 11 June 2006; National Theatre, London, Lyttelton Circle Foyer, from 10 April-20 May 2006; the Hunt Museum, Limerick, Ireland, from 9 January-9 February 2007 and University of Wales Art Gallery, Aberystwyth, from 12 February-23 March 2007.