Anjelica Huston has led a fascinating life, and she’s chosen to play characters who dig into our subconscious and stay there long after the movie is over. With films like “The Grifters”, “The Postman Always Rings Twice”, and two Wes Anderson creations under her belt, she’s led a long and successful career that didn’t hinge on her father’s famous name. In fact, in her new memoir, Huston says she deliberately shied away from writing too much about her dad because he always held the spotlight, and she wanted to be able to shine some of it on her mom.

“She was incredibly beautiful. She was an ex-ballerina,” said Huston on “CBS This Morning”. “One of the pleasures of writing this book was talking about my mother, because my dad gets a lot of attention and my mother really deserved it. She was incredibly special, very beloved to me and I lost her early. So it’s important to me to be able to talk about her.”

In “A Story Lately Told: Coming of Age in Ireland, London and New York”, Huston talks about growing up as the daughter of a famous director to become an “It Girl” model and later, an actress.

“I think a lot of actors and indeed a lot of artists spend alone time when they’re little,” she said. “Not necessarily unhappy, but time spent in contemplation and I grew up in the west of Ireland, which was quite a remote place and my best friend was the mirror … I was accused of vanity, but I think children really look into the mirror to see who they are.”

One thing she does not talk about is her relationship with Jack Nicholson, with whom she lived for seventeen years. In her interview with Gayle King, however, she did say that Nicholson draws people to him in a way that very few people can match.

“He’s a fascinating man and people like to know details,” she said. “Men love Jack almost as much as women love Jack.”

The memoir is part one of a two-part book series.

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