A HOLLYWOOD STORY

THE TV AND SCREEN VETERAN DETAILS HIS FAMED FAMILY'S HISTORYAND TRAGEDY-IN A NEW MEMOIR

- CARLY TAGEN-DYE

Griffin Dunne was 8 when Sean Connery saved him from drowning in the family pool. As a kid he listened while Warren Beatty played piano at an extravagant soiree thrown by his parents. His father, Dominick, coproduced the seminal 1970 film The Boys in the Band, and his best friend and former roommate was Carrie Fisher. Dunne was there when she landed her iconic role as Princess Leia in Star Wars, and he once walked in on her consoling James Taylor, who feared his then wife, Carly Simon, didn’t love him, during one of their wild parties.

He’s lived an interesting, entertaining life, so when he sat down to write his new book The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir, Dunne wanted to go the funny route.

“I thought I’d be writing a lot of humorous, [David] Sedaris-like anecdotes,” the actor, director and producer, 68, tells People. But his family’s story is marked by sadness, including the murder of his younger sister in 1982. To write the book, Dunne had to balance lighthearted stories with dark shadows. “I let myself go into the pain,” he says. “I found there was room for both humor and tragedy.”

Dunne, his younger brother Alex, 67, and late sister Dominique grew up surrounded by celebrity. So it was natural for him to pursue a Hollywood career, which began for him at age 19. He costarred in the 1981 horror comedy