In Looking for Gatsby - a title which perfectly conveys the haunting pursuit of romance that has always been a part of her life - Faye Dunaway has written a truly remarkable book. As she probes relentlessly for the truth about herself, she fearlessly confronts her demons, trying to set the record straight about her life, her loves, her work, searching for the events that shaped her, that gave her the drive - and the blazing need - to escape from a childhood of poverty and turmoil and to succeed so completely as an actress.

When she began her acting career, it was in the New York theater. Success came almost immediately, in Hogan's Goat, and fame soon after that, when in only her third film she was cast opposite Warren Beatty in Bonnie and Clyde. Her talent and her enigmatic beauty made her a major international star almost overnight and gave her at last the life she had only dreamed about as a child. But as Faye so openly admits, reality has a way of mocking dreams, and while success and fame came easily, happiness has proven much more elusive. She writes candidly of the men in her life - costars, lovers, husbands - and of the problems of competing needs and constant professional demands that frequently destroy relationships in the world of movie stardom.

There have been affairs, of course, some of which have been public knowledge, others discussed here for the first time, among them legendary comedian and satirist Lenny Bruce (about whom she writes movingly) and Italian superstar Marcello Mastroianni (with whom she had a long, stormy affair). She writes intimately of two of her marriages, her first to rock icon Peter Wolf, lead singer of the J. Geils Band, and later to renowned photographer Terry O'Neill, with whom she saw her greatest triumph, their son Liam.

1. Her career has been scarcely less tempestuous, however brilliant. She has appeared in such major successes as Bonnie and Clyde, Chinatown, The Thomas Crown Affair, Mommie Dearest and Network (for which she won an Academy Award as Best Actress) and experienced great disappointments, such as the failure of her 1993 television series.