The Secret Lives of Brando, Pacino, Dolly Parton, and More, by Lawrence Grobel (Ghana, 1966-68) in Vanity Fair

Lawrence Grobel poses with Al Pacino at the time of their interview for Playboy magazine in 1979 in a previously unpublished photo (Roberta Grobel Intrater)

The Secret Celebrity Diaries: A Master Interviewer’s Behind-the-Scenes Chronicles

In this fascinating Vanity Fair excerpt from his unpublished journals, Grobel reveals what it was really like to spend ten days on Brando’s private island near Tahiti, to watch a paranoid Pacino worry he’d revealed too much, and to have Dolly Parton talk him out of interviewing Charles Manson because “he’d steal your soul.”

The diary entries span from 1977 to 1981 and read like a time capsule of both Hollywood’s golden personalities and the era’s major cultural moments, from the Iran hostage crisis to John Lennon’s murder. What emerges is an intimate portrait of how great celebrity journalism actually gets made: Through patience, genuine curiosity, and the ability to see these larger-than-life figures as the complex, sometimes vulnerable people they really are.

Read the feature in Vanity Fair (subscription required)

About the author

Grobel served in the Peace Corps from 1968-71, teaching at the Ghana Institute of Journalism in West Africa. He went on to create the MFA program in Professional Writing for Antioch University in 1977 and served as its director for three years. He also taught writing classes at UCLA for more than a decade.

He has been a contributing editor at Playboy, Movieline, Hollywood Life, and other major publications, and has also written more than 30 books (Amazon.com), including acclaimed celebrity biographies and numerous interview collections including:

• Truman Capote (Conversations with Capote – winner of a PEN Special Achievement Award)
• Marlon Brando (Conversations with Brando)
• Al Pacino (Al Pacino: In Conversation)
• The Huston family (The Hustons – called “a masterpiece” by James A. Michener)
• James Michener, Robert Evans, and Ava Gardner

Grobel has also earned significant recognition for his work through the years, across numerous forms. He was the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for his fiction work, has had multiple books selected as Publisher’s Weekly Best Books of the Year, and won the Prix Litteraire from the French Critics Guild for Best International Book of 2009 for his book with Al Pacino.

He was given the Best Peace Corps Memoir award of 2023 by Peace Corps Writers (that’s us) for Turquoise: Three Years in Ghana, A Peace Corps Memoir, and the Special Achievement Award of 2024 by Peace Corps Writers for HUSTLE: The Making of a Freelance Writer.

His work has appeared in major publications including The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, Reader’s Digest, and many others, and his book The Art of the Interview is used as a foundational text in journalism schools nationwide.

Lawrence Grobel’s website: https://www.lawrencegrobel.com/