Pieces of My Heart: A Life

The New York Times bestseller Pieces of My Heart is the revelation-filled memoir from one of Hollywood’s most talented actors, Robert J. Wagner. He offers readers a candid and deeply personal look at his life and career, from his rise to stardom among legends like Cary Grant and Barbara Stanwyck to his troubled marriage, divorce, and remarriage to starlet Natalie Wood. With color photographs and never-before-told stories, this is a quintessentially American, remarkably candid story of one of the great sons of Hollywood.

Robert J. Wagner opens his heart to share the romances, the drama, and the humor of an incredible life.

When he was a young boy growing up in Bel Air next door to a golf course, Robert Wagner saw Fred Astaire, Clark Gable, Randolph Scott, and Cary Grant playing golf together one morning—and it fueled his dream of becoming a movie star.

In Pieces of My Heart, Wagner offers a candid and deeply personal look at his life and career—his rise to stardom in the studiodominated Hollywood era of the 1950s; his relationship with mentors like Spencer Tracy and David Niven, and with friends like Rock Hudson and Tony Curtis; his decline and his resurrection. And he speaks from the heart of the women he loved: Barbara Stanwyck, a glamorous star twice his age; Marion Marshall, Jill St. John . . . and Natalie Wood. For the very first time he chronicles in great depth their extraordinary romance and bares his pain as he openly recounts its tragic end.

With color photographs and fascinating never-before-told tales and anecdotes, Pieces of My Heart is the heartfelt, remarkably revealing, and quintessentially American story of one of the great sons of Hollywood.

“Surprisingly vulnerable.” - Detroit News

“Wonderful glimpses into the older generation of screen stars who became his friends and mentors—Spencer Tracy, David Niven, Frank Sinatra—and it’s always astute delineations of how exactly Old Hollywood worked.” - Newsweek

“Pieces of My Heart is warm and magnanimous. Wagner chronicles his personal life in considerable detail and with an eye toward self-discovery. He does not shrink from recounting the darker times, especially the death of his wife, Natalie Wood.” - Charleston Post & Courier

“Mesmerizing” - Kirkus Reviews

“Engaging” - Publishers Weekly

“Pieces of My Heart is a treasure. . . . Wagner’s portrait of [Natalie] Wood is adoring and poignant. . . . With admirable strength and honest self-awareness, Wagner makes plain that there’s much more to him than his handsome face.” - Washington Post