Home BARBRA PASKIN is a British journalist who has been writing, producing and broadcasting from Los Angeles since becoming the BBC’s first Hollywood correspondent in the late '70s.
She is best recognised for her expansive coverage of arts and entertainment in Los Angeles. Her interviews in that area have ranged from arts luminaries such as Luciano Pavarotti, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Placido Domingo, Zubin Mehta, David Hockney and Sir John Gielgud, to hundreds of legendary names from Hollywood’s Golden Age, among them John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Cary Grant, George Raft, Danny Kaye, Sammy Davis Jr, Charlton Heston, Rock Hudson, David Niven, Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, George Cukor, Orson Welles, Mae West and Alfred Hitchcock.
She has interviewed many of Hollywood’s current stars and has worked on a vast number of prestigious and award-winning BBC documentary series that have been seen around the world.
Her interviews have also been used by American broadcasters, among them, Ted Turner's TNT documentaries which include The Making Of Gone With The Wind. Barbra has also directed and produced featurettes for American film studios, including MGM’s The Postman Always Rings Twice (w/Jack Nicholson, Jessica Lange), Yes Giorgio (Luciano Pavarotti), In the Still of the Night (Meryl Streep) and Return of the Pink Panther for Blake Edwards.
Her print features and cover stories have appeared in newspaper and magazines all over the world, among them: UK - The Times (for whom she was appointed special features correspondent in 2000), The Telegraph, Woman’s Journal, The Lady, Sunday Express Magazine, Daily Mail, Weekend Magazine, The Lady, Film Review, Radio Times, Films & Filming; Australia - Australian Daily Telegraph, Australian Women's Weekly, New Idea, New Zealand Listener; America - Hollywood Reporter, US magazine, USA Today, Braniff Airlines Mag, Los Angeles Times; Europe/Asia - Gente (Italy), Wings of the World (Malaysia), Film World (India), Bullspresse (Scandinavia), France-Dimanche (France).
Barbra has appeared on numerous American television entertainment shows, been guest co-host on Los Angeles TV talk shows and radio newscasts and was profiled in a PBS documentary about LA-based foreign correspondents.
Most recently, she wrote the BBC radio documentaries Pure Imagination:The Leslie Bricusse Story, The Secret Life of Danny Kaye, Gone With The Wind:The 75th Anniversary and James Dean:The Last Ten Weeks.
She is also a passionate cook and recently filmed a pilot for a new American food programme, 'A Feast For The Eyes'. The show demonstrates how everyone can turn their everyday food into a glamorous offering fit for celebrity dining.
Barbra is the author of the highly-acclaimed biography Dudley Moore: The Melancholy Clown, which has been optioned as a 3-part television miniseries by the producers of the award-winning series Fleabag. Her latest book, Dear Dudley: Life and Laughter, includes a unique section of 100 letters she obtained from his celebrity friends.
She is currently completing her next book, Inside Hollywood, a collection of her celebrity photographs spanning four decades, with a
nostalgic foreword written by Robert Wagner.
She co-authored Michael Freeland's Hollywood On Trial and has contributed to dozens of entertainment biographies, among them
Sheridan Morley's best-selling biography of David Niven,The Other Side
of the Moon, Alexander Walker's acclaimed Elizabeth,the
life of Elizabeth Taylor, and Quentin Falk's Anthony Hopkins: The Authorised Biography.
Her next books are Birds In The Bookcase (a memoir of her 30-year love affair and relationship with birds), The Leslie Bricusse Story and An Asian Journey, which - armed solely with her laptop and a basic knowledge of Malay - chronicles her travels across Malaysia and into the heart of the steamy Borneo rainforest with its longhouses and former headhunters.
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BARBRA PASKIN
