The PATRICIA NEAL Only I Knew

THE OSCAR WINNER'S CLOSE FRIEND SHARES PERSONAL STORIES OF HER KINDNESS, GRACE AND RESILIENCE

Though she was a revered Tony and Oscar winner who shared the screen with legends including John Wayne, Gary Cooper and Tyrone Power, Patricia Neal never outgrew the simpler pleasures of a quiet night at home. "We'd watch movies over at her house, and we'd laugh, and we'd cry, and we'd talk about films," Stephen Michael Shearer, author of Patricia Neal: An Unquiet Life, tells Closer of the intimate moments he shared with his friend and muse, who'd often invite him to her New York apartment or home in Martha's Vineyard.

"Pat was a lovely, approachable woman. Anybody who knew her knew that by the end of a conversation, she would know more about you than you knew about her," Shearer adds of Neal, who died in 2010 at the age of 84, having lived a life full of both thrilling successes and heartbreaking tragedies.