This book shouldn’t work. A memoir written by a 60-year-old actress – who, frankly, has never threatened to become a major movie star – hardly sounds promising. Then there’s the author’s personal baggage. Since 2014, Cheryl Hines has been married to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the raspy-voiced Health and Human Services Secretary who served as one of Donald Trump’s chief surrogates during his last presidential campaign. Rarely has a book so straddled the worlds of Hollywood and conservative politics, let alone those embodied by the current administration.
Yet, against all the odds, Unscripted is an enthralling read. To address the burning topic first: no, not all of Hines’s friends were entirely happy with her husband’s appointment, nor with his views on Dr. Anthony Fauci, whom he accused of pulling off a “historic coup against western democracy” by advocating for Covid vaccines. Ted Danson, who worked with Hines for more than 20 years on Curb Your Enthusiasm, says he “no longer sees” either her or her husband as a result. For his part, Curb’s creator, Larry David, has gone on record as “not actively supporting” RFK Jr., which, as understatements go, is a bit like one of those old Soviet health bulletins advising the world that the dear leader was resting peacefully a week after his lifeless body had been removed to the Kremlin morgue. As Hines acknowledges here: “Certain people would call me and say, ‘I can’t believe the news [of Kennedy’s appointment]. You can’t let this happen!’”
Hines’s gift for portraying the essential strangeness of the acting profession can be compared to Carrie Fisher’s
There was also that unseemly recent spat with the panel on The View. It says something about either the naivety of a woman who has worked in Hollywood for decades (or her commendable detachment from the reality of today’s media) that Hines apparently thought she might be afforded the courtesy of a civilized exchange with her hosts on the program. This was not quite what happened. At one point in the proceedings, Hines described her husband as being “completely different” from anyone else she’d ever met. “That’s for sure,” remarked Joy Behar, rolling her eyes. “I don’t think they asked me one question about my book,” Hines later complained.
That being so, I’m pleased to report that this is a well-told, frequently engrossing account of a working-class Florida girl who grew up with dreams of doing something with her life. In time, she caught the acting bug, made her way to Universal Studios in Orlando and promptly found herself staffing a 1-900 chatline.
Next, she was offered a part in a cable-TV show called Swamp Thing, where the script called on her to do little more than emerge from a large man-made puddle on the studio floor and stand there for a while. Another time she appeared on an episode of The Dating Game, but wasn’t chosen to go on a date. Life was a bit like that for Hines in the 1990s. This may have been her nadir as a working actress, but it’s the high point of her book, which passes over the serial rebuffs and setbacks in breezy, vernacular fashion.
Along the way, she recounts a particularly gruesome encounter with James Toback, the director responsible for such aptly named films as The Pick-Up Artist and Two Girls and a Guy. Their meeting took place in Toback’s Hollywood hotel room and, as described in the book, may have the reader reaching for the sick bag – although at least Hines successfully concluded the “interview” at the point when her host inquired about her body hair. Many years later, Toback was found guilty in a civil lawsuit and ordered to pay $1.68 billion to 40 women, which one imagines may have more symbolic than material value when it comes to compensating those who had accused him of abuse.
After the gripping up-and-coming chapters of Unscripted, we settle into the groove of Hines’s long and apparently blissfully untroubled run on Curb, in parallel to her equally happy marriage to RFK Jr. The author doesn’t exactly break new ground in this part of the story, but does at least know what ground she is on. She’s also good at the deft character sketch, with an actor’s eye for an individual’s quirks or idiosyncrasies. (In the case of Larry David, it’s his phobia about being touched – you’d get an elbow bump if you were lucky.) Even then, Hines displays the performer’s characteristic insecurity too, remarking that in 2012 she thought it highly unlikely Curb would return for another season. Twelve years later, she was there when the show came to an end.
When she’s on form, Hines’s gift for portraying the essential strangeness of the acting profession can be compared to that of Carrie Fisher or Kelly Bishop. There’s a certain amount of high-end politics and Hollywood schmoozing involved, but it’s the author’s candid, often drily humorous origin story that most comes alive on the page. Her hosts on The View missed an opportunity to discuss a book that’s authentic, funny and often strangely moving.
This article was originally published in The Spectator’s January 19, 2026 World edition.
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