We might just have yet another promising writer in a Bollywood actor, we think, after negotiating Close to the Bone, a warm and detailed memoir by Lisa Ray that releases tomorrow. People are often, not what they seem - Ray, for one, has acquired far more formal acting training than we imagined - and life is as much happy and morbid for the famous as it is for the average Joe, you realise. The "dreamer gypsy", encouraged by her Bengali father and Polish mother "to keep flying" discusses learning to act, finding and losing love, negotiating an eating disorder and surviving a rare form of blood cancer in an intelligent, inspiring personal story.

Edited excerpts from the interview.