Ali MacGraw’s life reads like one of the tragic romances that made her famous, only messier, braver, and more honest. The girl who endured her father’s rages, cramped poverty, and a brutal lack of privacy rocketed into a world of magazine covers, Golden Globes, and the global phenomenon of Love Story. But the same intensity that fueled her rise pulled her into a storm of obsessive love, Steve McQueen’s jealousy and control, failed films, and the numbing escape of alcohol. Checking herself into Betty Ford was less a scandal than a last act of self-rescue.

When wildfire erased her California home, she chose to erase Hollywood from her daily life, too. In tiny Tesuque, New Mexico, she rebuilt from nothing: volunteering, rescuing animals, teaching yoga, and quietly cheering on her son Josh as he forged his own path in film. The woman once defined by youth and beauty now wears her age and gray hair like armor, living proof that walking away from the spotlight can be the most powerful role of all.