Muir' (1947), Tierney attained a strata of celebrity that put her on par with fellow sirens Rita Hayworth, Lana Turner and Ava Gardner. Stahl’s 'Leave Her to Heaven' (1945), to a maturity and grace far beyond her years in Joseph L. Gliding seamlessly from smoldering sensuality in Preminger’s 'Laura' (1944), to sang froid psychopathy in John M. Honing her craft under extreme conditions – she brooked the tempers of such autocratic émigrés as Fritz Lang, Ernst Lubitsch and Otto Preminger – Tierney emerged as a leading lady of equal beauty and depth. With candor, humor, and sometimes with anger, but never with self-pity or self-indulgence, she tells of her meteoric career, her long, slow, uneven recovery from 'the black tunnel of mental illness' the struggles with her doctors, her treatments, her escape from confinement, her depressions, her mad impulses, herself, always herself.and finally on to a happy remarriage and tranquillity.When Paramount Pictures fumbled Gene Tierney’s proposed film debut in its aborted adaptation of 'National Velvet,' 20th Century Fox saw promise in the gimlet-eyed beauty with the regal cheekbones and curiously beguiling overbite. Her first daughter was born deaf, blind, hopelessly retarded, At the crest of her career, Gene Tierny attempted suicide, suffered a nervous breakdown, and spent the next seven years in and out of sanatoriums. Her father became a cruel disappointment. Outwardly living every woman's fantasies, she became an emotional invalid. But the inside story of her greatest, most heart-wrenching role - herself - has never been told until right now. Word of her dates with billionaire Howard huges and a lighthearted ex - naval officer named Jack Kennedy circulated over the years. Her rollercoaster marriage to fashion designer Oleg Cassini and her globe-trotting affair with Prince Aly Khan were public property.

'My problems began when I had to be myself.' In Hollywood's golden age, everyone knew the starring roles Miss Tierney played in her 36 films: the unwashed Ellie May in 'Tobacco Road,' the demure Martha in 'Heaven can Wait ' her appearances opposite Clark Gable, Tyrone Power, Rex Harrison, Humphrey Bogart, Henry Fonda, and, best remmebered of all, as the haunting - murdered? -beauty of the portrait painting in 'Laura,' one of the most televised films ever. Overview: 'I had no trouble playing any kind of a role,' Gene Tierney writes.

Self portrait by gene tierney