Wilder at Hearthewas One of America's Most Popular Comic Actors Thanks to the Producers and His Iconic Portrayal of Willy Wonka, but Gene Wilder Had More Personal Problems Than the Chocolate Factory Had Calories. As His Autobiography Is Published, He Talks to Peter Ross About His Marriages, His Compulsive Behaviour and His Complex Relationship with His Parents

Sunday Herald › June 24, 2005

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Summary

THE year is 1951. The place, Iowa City's university campus. A teenager with the bluest eyes and blondest curls, a neurotic angel, is kneeling in front of a building. He is perfectly still, but look closely and you will see his lips moving; bend down to his mouth - don't worry, he won't notice, he now has those baby blues screwed shut - and you will hear him talking to God. He is asking to be forgiven, begging really, but trying to do it quietly so his college mates won't think he's a nut.

This is Jerry Silberman. He isn't yet Gene Wilder, movie star, although he'd like to be. Oh, he'd given anything not to be Jerry Silberman, on his knees, oppressed by the Iowa sun and his own boiling brain, but for the moment he is stuck with himself, and Jerry has a big problem: he can't stop praying.

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Extract

Wilder at Hearthewas One of America's Most Popular Comic Actors Thanks to the Producers and His Iconic Portrayal of Willy Wonka, but Gene Wilder Had More Personal Problems Than the Chocolate Factory Had Calories. As His Autobiography Is Published, He Talks to Peter Ross About His Marriages, His Compulsive Behaviour and His Complex Relationship with His Parents

"I'm praying for forgiveness, " Wilder says now, over an egg mayo sarnie and a glass of chilled Sauvignon Blanc, "for what I don't know, but I cover everything - every incident, every person I might have offended, things from the past - anything that I might have done that might have caused harm to someone that I needed to be forgiven for. And I couldn't think of anything. I mean, little things that happened yesterday or last week or something like that, but that doesn't require two, three, four hours of praying in a row. So it made no sense, and yet I had to do it because I didn't know what I had done. It's crazy."

His period of compulsive praying, which lasted through much of the Fifties, is just one of the extremely personal reminiscences contained in Wilder's memoir, Kiss Me Like A Strange...

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