Whoa, my head's spinning from a Brat Pack-induced cloud of celebrity authoring mindgames. It turns out that Ally Sheedy wrote a children's book called She was nice to mice: The other side of Elizabeth I's character never before revealed by previous historians, which was a best-seller, but is now out of print. [When I checked, there were at least nine copies for sale on Abebooks.com, ranging in price from $3-65 [!?]. It's 95 pages, though, so don't plan to read it at bedtime. The catch? She wrote it when she was 12 years old.
The book's success led to an appearance on the Mike Douglas Show, which got young Sheedy an agent, which--well, you know the rest.
Except that did you know Sheedy just did a reading from She was nice to mice at this year's Sundance Film Festival? How'd we all miss that ticket? Last bit of Sheedyvia: she's married to Angela Lansbury's nephew. OK, my work is done here. [thanks to dt reader Marjorie, who reminds me that "each one of us is a brain, and an athlete, and a basket case, a princess, and a criminal."]
Wasn't Ally Sheedy also featured in a Nat'l Geographic WORLD article in the mid/late 1970's which highlighted her youthful aptitude as an abstract expressionist painter?
Geez, did she also decode linear B?
She was also my first crush, after I saw her in "War Games." I guess that doesn't really enhance her status much, and yet how many of us can truthfully say we were someone's first crush? I know I can't.