Ty Burr's six favorite movie-star biographies

Ty Burr has been a film critic at The Boston Globe since 2002. Prior to that he wrote about movies for Entertainment Weekly, and he began his career as an in-house movie analyst for HBO. His books include The Best Old Movies for Families: A Guide to Watching Together and the newly released Gods Like Us: On Movie Stardom and Modern Fame.

One of his six favorite movie-star biographies, as told to The Week magazine:

All the Available Light: A Marilyn Monroe Reader edited by Yona Zeldis McDonough

With contributions from Gloria Steinem, Joyce Carol Oates, Molly Haskell, Sir Laurence Olivier, and Clare Boothe Luce, this book comes at Marilyn from all sides — and still never gets to the bottom of her mystique.

Read about the other books on the list.

Also see: Five of the best Hollywood tell-alls.

--Marshal Zeringue