"Vanessa van Durme has made choices in her life. Hard choices, painful choices. Choices that caused her parents a lot of grief.
Now she is a celebrated actress who feels her sixtieth birthday approaching. She has fond memories of her work for public and commercial broadcasting, of the comedy see the wrote, and of the wonderful role she played in All India by Alain Platel and Arne Sierens.
Her autobiography regularly brings tears to the eyes of the reader. Sometimes out of sympathy, more often out of laughter."
According to Wikipedia, Vanessa Van Durme (born in 1948) is a Belgian actress and screenwriter. She studied at the Conservatory of Ghent in the drama section and made her stage debut – as a young actor – at Nederlands Toneel Gent (NTG).
In the 1970s, she decided to leave NTG and focus on her transition into a woman. Her gender reassignment surgery was performed by Dr. Georges Burou in Casablanca (Morocco) in 1975.
Twenty years later, reconnecting with the performing arts, she began writing comedies.
She is the author of about twenty plays and dozens of scripts for various television channels, including the Flemish public channel VRT for which she did the soap opera Liefde en Geluk (Love and Chance), which she also directed. She then wrote the autobiographical book Kijk mama, ik dans (Look at Mom, I Dance), which gave rise to a play with the same title. The book is written with astonishing frankness, especially about her transition, and it hopes to break down public prejudices and show that people "who are different" are also... People.
Tolerance and acceptance of what is "different" are values that Vanessa particularly cares about.
Available via goodreads.com
and Wikipedia
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