Jeffrey Tambor has had a very successful run in show business and in life. He’s got more film, TV, and theater credits than can easily be counted, Emmy nominations for his standout supporting roles on The Larry Sanders Show and Arrested Development, a whole bunch of awards for his portrayal of a transgendered woman on Transparent, and responsibility for the single weirdest moment of Three’s Company’s eight-year run. Now, the 71-year-old actor is gathering up a book’s worth of his memories for a collection of autobiographical essays to be titled Are You Anybody, according to the Associated Press.


Recalling his father’s pessimistic worldview—which he describes as, “Don’t celebrate—they’ll take it away from you”—Tambor will guide readers through his San Francisco childhood as a “fat kid with a lisp in a Hungarian-Jewish family” and his 40-year career as a character actor, up to his celebrated lead role on Transparent. “Books and theater saved me,” Tambor says in a statement. “I am thrilled to be publishing my first book with Crown. I look forward to sharing the stories and lessons from my life that have shaped the characters I’ve played, and how those characters have helped shape me. Some stories will be awkward, others inspiring, some dark, most funny, and all will, I think, be hopeful and instructive.”

Tricia Boczkowski, vice president of the publishing house, praises the actor’s talents in a statement: “Jeffrey is one of the most gifted storytellers of our time,” she says. “Now he turns a gimlet eye on his own life in a book that reads like an intimate conversation over dinner with a beloved friend and teacher.” Crown Archetype will publish Are You Anybody in spring 2017.