Who I Am - Charlotte Rampling with Christophe Bataille

Oscar-nominated Charlotte Rampling most recently appeared in hit ITV drama Broadchurch, the BBC’s London Spy and HBO’s Dexter, and the feature film 45 Years.
Her career has spanned popular entertainment and arthouse cinema, having starred in English, French and Italian films from 1966’s Georgy Girl (opposite Lynn Redgrave), to films with French director François Ozon, including 2003’s Swimming Pool.
Having shied away from biographies and autobiographies (“too personal”) Rampling has now written Who I Am, an intimate self-portrait via reminiscences, translated from the French it was originally written in. 

The characters that Rampling has played on screen over the years - from the shallow, vain Meredith in Georgy Girl through to the distracted, pained Kate in 45 years, are filled with a sense of mystery - Rampling's intelligence always shining through in order to instantly add layers of depth and intrigue. 
Here, that intelligence is used to good effect in a memoir that is exquisitely written and filled with fascinating glimpses and moments from a life that is just as intriguing as one may imagine when looking at an image of Rampling. 

No standard celebrity memoir here - instead moments from Ramplings life are conveyed to the reader through snatches of conversation and memory, as Rampling wrote this with Christophe Bataille, a well known French writer.  The "stream of consciousness" style may be off-putting to some - and at times it had me wondering if I truly would be learning anything about Rampling when reading. However, on reflection, recollections of the author's Father and revelations about the early death of Rampling's sister prove to be both intriguing and haunting. This isn't a book to read to find salacious gossip or recollections of a celebrity lifestyle - but instead moments of a fascinating life seen through the mysterious eyes of one of our greatest actors. Many thanks to the publishers for the copy.