Vicki Abelson's Broadcast: The Road Taken

Arriving at actor, author, collector, world-traveler, chef, and scholar, Thaao Penghlis’s home was a feast for the senses. Magnificent art and artifacts from the entrance to the john, where an enormous, gorgeous, Peter O’Toole as Lawrence oversees the proceedings. Next visit, I hope, a feast the belly––hIs lentil white bean soup recipe had Christinna and I salivating. Thaao lives his life to the full, doing and being his best at whatever he’s approaching at that moment. From his childhood in Australia, enmeshed in everything Greek, to struggling to eat in New York where he assisted his mentor in the art world, selling to an adoring Jackie Kennedy, Claudette Colbert, Sir John Gielgud, to finding his way to the stage and then film, despite being told he should never act; first forJohn Avildsen, fresh off his Rocky triumph, in Slow Dancing In The Big City, for Ken Russell in Altered States… some stories there! A volatile Russell, difficult William Hurt, and a banished Paddy Chayefsky. A rapist in The Bell Jar