Fresh off his memorable turn as a mental patient in the 1975 film "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," Christopher Lloyd signed with a Hollywood talent agent. As Mr. Lloyd explains in his memoir, "In My Own Time," he let his new representatives know that he wasn't interested in doing television. Yet something told him to say yes when the creators of the sitcom "Taxi" wanted him to do a guest shot as a wedding officiant during the show's first season in 1978.
Mr. Lloyd, who seems to have a particular affinity for playing flamboyant oddballs, made hay of the opportunity and became a regular on the series, winning two Emmys (in 1982 and 1983) for his portrayal of the sweet-souled, spaced-out, drug-addled Jim Ignatowski. Mr. Lloyd had long questioned the viability of his career choice. No more.
A grandson of a co-founder of Texaco, Mr. Lloyd grew up lonely and introspective on a 400-acre estate in New Canaan, Conn. His father was chilly and remote. His mother was a frustrated musician who drowned her discontents in alcohol, and young Christopher was tended to by nannies. While at boarding school, he had his first brush with the mystique of acting when he was called on stage to assist a magician with an illusion. He was "instructing me how to give the impression . . . that something was taking place even though it wasn't," Mr. Lloyd writes. He realized that what he was experiencing wasn't "hocus-pocus -- it was theater."
The disarmingly wry "In My Own Time" chronicles the author's early days in the New York stage world of the 1960s and '70s. He rashly gave up a part in Lanford Wilson's "The Hot L. Baltimore" in 1973 for the lead in a production of the abstruse Peter Handke play "Kaspar." (Mr. Lloyd writes that he identified with the title character, who claimed to have been raised in a dungeon.) He played Banquo to Christopher Walken's Macbeth in a 1974 production at Lincoln Center, and a stint at the Yale Repertory Theatre put him on stage with a young Meryl Streep.
"Taxi" raised Mr. Lloyd's profile. More quirky parts followed. After receiving one particular screenplay, Mr. Lloyd admits that he "skimmed through it and tossed it into a wastepaper basket." A friend admonished him for the high-hat dismissal, and a chastened Mr. Lloyd fished out the script for a closer look. The title was "Back to the Future." Hmmm.
The resulting 1985 science-fiction comedy, one of the most successful movies of the decade, teamed him with Michael J. Fox. Cast as the eccentric scientist Doc Brown, Mr. Lloyd took his inspiration from the "wild energy" and long white hair of the British conductor and composer Leopold Stokowski.
The actor is candid about his social and professional struggles in Hollywood as well as his years of substance abuse. (He's now sober, he says.) Mr. Lloyd's musings about his craft are often short of showstopping. But his gratitude for a career he loves comes across as utterly heartfelt.
"I can't tell what's real and what's a dream." So begins "Never Say Die," a memoir by the actor Ke Huy Quan.
The dreamlike moments recalled by Mr. Quan were, in fact, nightmares. He was only 7 in 1977 when he, one of his brothers and his father were jailed for the crime of trying to escape communist Vietnam. Like other ethnically Chinese families in the city that had been called Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City), the Quans were treated by the government as "disloyal, foreign, too connected to China." The family was split for a while in two by their attempts to leave Vietnam -- Ke's mother successfully slipped away to Malaysia with three of his siblings, but Ke, his father and five other children remained behind.
Ke's father, making a repeat attempt at getting them all out, was caught and arrested again. Eventually, he found them passage out of the country. In late 1979, after a harrowing ocean voyage to Hong Kong and time in a refugee camp -- all vividly described here -- Ke was on a plane with his father and siblings to Los Angeles, where they were at last reunited with his mother and the brother and sisters he hadn't seen for two years.
Ke landed the plum role of Short Round, the street-smart orphan of "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" (1984) by fluke. Then 12 years old, Ke was at a table outside of his Los Angeles school on a Saturday, working with his younger brother, David, and their English-language tutor. Their attention was soon caught by the throngs of children lining up for what turned out to be an open audition for the film.
David decided to join them, but was overcome by nerves when his turn came. Ke, who'd come along, began to coach his sibling, making bold expressions and gestures and encouraging David to copy him. The casting directors were captivated by his energy. So were the movie's director, Steven Spielberg, and its star, Harrison Ford, after they met with Ke a few days later.
The experience was transformative. Mr. Ford taught Ke how to swim. Mr. Spielberg and George Lucas, who co-wrote and executive-produced the film, each sent him a truckload of toys for his birthday. Soon after "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" wrapped, Ke was cast in Richard Donner's 1985 film "The Goonies." An acting career seemed assured. As he got older, though, work became progressively elusive. He had "not even a rumor of a job," Mr. Quan writes of his late teens. "I was terrified someone would ask me what I was doing next."
In time Mr. Quan pivoted successfully to choreographing action sequences for film and television before deciding at almost 50 that he wanted to return to acting. In a spectacular comeback, he won an Academy Award for his performance as a mild-mannered husband in the absurdist comedy-drama "Everything Everywhere All at Once" (2022).
The focus of "Never Say Die" is as much on Mr. Quan's family life and his struggles to be a good son as it is on his work on the set. It's clear how important all those roles have been to him.
-- Ms. Kaufman frequently reviews fiction for the Journal.