11 surprising celebrity authors

As Dana Scully in The X-Files, Gillian Anderson was the voice of scientific scepticism. In real life, she is much more open-minded about unexplained phenomena, and in 2014 she delighted the X-Files fanbase by publishing her first science fiction novel A Vision of Fire, co-authored with best-selling sci-fi writer Jeff Rovin. Not to be outdone, her X-Files cohort David Duchovny - who has an MA in English Literature from Yale - has recently issued two comic novels, including 2015’s Holy Cow (narrated by Elsie, a cow).

Everybody knows that actor John Travolta is also a trained pilot, but less well-known is the storybook he wrote about his love of flight. Published in 1997, Propeller One-Way Night Coach is a “fable for all ages”, in which young Jeff fulfils his dreams of flying on an aeroplane for the first time. Travolta initially only made 75 copies for his friends, before being persuaded to publish the story for real. He’s far from the only Hollywood star with literary ambitions: in 1996, Ethan Hawke - Travolta’s co-star from In A Valley of Violence - published The Hottest State, a novel following the fortunes of first-time actor William and his whirlwind romance with the free spirit Sarah. He followed it up in 2012 with Ash Wednesday, a JD Salinger-esque story of growing up and settling down.

Comedy legend Eric Morecambe wrote his first novel while recovering from his second heart attack in 1979. Described as “brilliant” by contemporary Spike Milligan - although not many others, to be fair - Mr Lonely tells the tale of Sid Lewis, a low-level stand-up comedian who ekes out a living in clubs, until a new character turns him into a TV star, and his life is complicated by success.

Another beloved funnyman with a serious side is Steve Martin, who has long been a prolific writer, publishing plays, screenplays and essays since the late 70s. He didn’t step into novel-writing until 2000, when he published Shopgirl, a novella about a lonely ladieswear seller, described as “elegant, bleak, desolatingly sad" by the New York Times. Two more novels followed: 2003’s The Pleasure of My Company and 2010’s An Object of Beauty.

Although a large part of her lasting image is as the ultimate pinup girl, Monroe was also an avid reader with a wide-ranging bookshelf (Joyce, Hemingway, Milton), determined to push herself artistically. That included in the field of writing, and her private poems were finally published in 2010 in a volume called Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters. The brief but intense pieces revealed a philosophical bent: “Life / I am of both of your directions / Somehow remaining hanging downward the most / but strong as a cobweb in the wind”.

Hazell Plays Solomon is a hard-boiled detective novel by PB Yuill - a pseudonym for former England, Leeds, Tottenham and Barcelona manager Terry Venables, alongside journalist Gordon Williams The titular Hazell was a wisecracking Cockney take on the pulp fiction private eye. It may not shock you to learn that he was a maverick who played by his own rules, constantly locking horns with CID chap Choc Minty. Hazell Plays Solomon was published in 1974 when El Tel was playing for Crystal Palace; four years later, the Hazell books were made into a TV series starring Nicholas Ball (EastEnder’s Terry Bates) in the title role.

Aston Villa manager Steve Bruce also has a little-known literary past: in the late 90s, he wrote a series of predictably football-centric mystery novels called Striker!, Sweeper! and Defender! ("It was a long time ago, and I'm not sure I want to be reminded of how bad they were," Bruce said in 2013. "Just because I got a GCSE in English, I thought I was going to be the next Dick Francis. It didn't make any contribution at all to anyone's income. It became a laughing stock, to be honest.”) Many more footballers, meanwhile, have ventured into children’s writing, including Theo Walcott, Frank Lampard and David Beckham.

Ambassador of the Vulcan race and king of the sharply defined eyebrow, original Star Trek actor Leonard Nimoy had many powers beyond his deadly nerve pinch. He was also a published poet, and in contrast to his character’s emotional hauteur, poems like A Silence with You are full of warmth. So much so that his work often pops up on wedding websites. Another actor-poet who completed his first volume recently was James Franco, whose Directing Herbert White was published by Faber, home to the works of Sylvia Plath and TS Eliot. Like much of Franco’s work outside of his mainstream movies - he has also made art, short films and short stories - it focuses on the facades and surfaces of fame and image, and inevitably gets a bit meta. "There is a fake version of me / And he's the one that writes / These poems. / He has an attitude and a swagger / That I don't have."

Following Madonna’s kabbalah-inspired The English Roses in 2003, it seemed for a while that you weren’t a proper celebrity if you didn’t also publish a children’s book - see Paul McCartney’s High in the Clouds, Ricky Gervais’s Flanimals, Geri Halliwell’s Ugenia Lavender, Gloria Estefan’s The Magically Mysterious Adventures of Noelle the Bulldog and Jim Carrey’s How Roland Rolls. Twenty years ahead of the curve was country deity Dolly, who wrote The Coat of Many Colours in 1994, based on her much-loved 1971 song of the same name. It tells the true story of a vibrant coat made from rags by Parton’s mother during her impoverished Tennessee childhood. When the girl wears the coat to school she is teased, but tells her classmates that riches come in many forms. “Although we had no money / I was rich as could be / In my coat of many colours / My mama made for me.’

Tom Fletcher and Dougie Poynter from pop-punk manband McFly also recently ventured into the children’s picture-book market. Less rustically heartwarming that Dolly Parton’s effort, the McFly boys’ book knows its market, combining three of children’s great loves: Christmas, prehistoric creatures and toilet humour. The Dinosaur that Pooped Christmas (yes, really) tells in rhyme the story of Danny, whose new pet manages to eat the entire festive season. But what goes in must come out, right? Fans of the work include Metallica, whose Lars Ulrich read it for all the little metalheads out there on Jo Whiley’s BBC Radio 2 show in December. Also in the series: The Dinosaur that Pooped a Planet, The Dinosaur that Pooped the Past and The Dinosaur that Pooped the Bed.

The Iron Maiden frontman’s 1990 literary outing The Adventures of Lord Iffy Boatrace is not what you might expect from a heavy metal lifer. The first in the Lord Iffy series is actually a puerile farce in the manner of Viz meets Carry On (with apologies to PG Wodehouse). The titular Iffy, described by Dickinson as “an upper-class chinless wonder”, is an aristocrat fallen on hard times. In order to maintain himself in the lifestyle to which he’s become accustomed, he devises a scheme involving robotic grouse and a talking plum pudding. It also features a cameo from Eddie, the monstrous Maiden mascot.

Woody Guthrie, godfather of American folk and inspiration to Bob Dylan, Billy Bragg and countless others, was also a budding novelist. House of Earth was written in 1947 but only published in 2013. Like many of Guthrie’s songs, the novel is based in a dustbowl landscape of grim poverty, with farmers Tike and Elly Mae Hamlin struggling in Steinbeckian style against their cruel lot: “Why has there got to be always something that knocks you down? Why is this country full of things that you can't see, things that beat you down, kick you down, throw you around, and kill out hope?" There are, though, moments of lightness.

The Hole frontwoman has always been one for playing with her own myth, so her manga comic creation Princess Ai doesn’t come as too much of a surprise. Ai - which means Love in Japanese - is a half-human, half-angel exile. She has mysterious powers to control people’s emotions with her voice and carries a heart-shaped box made of angel blood everywhere she goes. After ending up in Tokyo with no memory of how she got there, she makes her living as a rock singer in a nightclub, before falling for sensitive Japanese-American librarian Kent. Semi-autobiographical elements, you say? Maybe a little.