Celebrities' favourite books

Film stars share their favourite literary choices in a special feature for M's Summer Reading Issue.

Cyrus Sahukar: The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. "It was the first book I read by Oscar Wilde and I have been a fan since. Every line is so beautifully written that you can revisit it at any Show more

Anne Hathaway

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

"I wanted to be Mary Lennox

so badly," says Hathaway, pictured here in a scene from the film Becoming Jane. "I still have a soft spot for gardens and I'm always going off to see if I can find locked doors inside them."

Drew Barrymore

Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E Frankl

"This book changed my life," Barrymore says. "Frankl, a psychologist and concentration camp survivor, shows how we can find the higher meaning in everything, even the most dire situations. He explains to the reader how to go about doing this, and he speaks with experience. This book defines inspiration."

Keira Knightley

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

"I read the book a lot," Knightley says. "I've been obsessed by the book since I was about 7. I had all the Austen series on book tape. I was obsessed with the BBC version when I was about 10 or 11. I read the book finally when I was about 14 and got obsessed again."

Alec Baldwin

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

"In some important ways," Baldwin says, "the characters that we have grown to love in this story are worse off at its end, but they are wiser, and the family still has each other. This is a great story about facing life's difficulties and moving on, no matter what."

Najwa Karam

Karem Ala Dareb by Mikhail Naimy

"Be beautiful and you will see a beautiful world," says the Lebanese superstar, who graduated with a philosophy certificate and was a teacher for two years. So it's no surprise she is a fan of the spiritual Lebanese author and poet who was a contemporary of Khalil Gibran.

Rachel McAdams

Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver

"I absolutely fell in love with this book," McAdams says. "I don't think I got out of bed for three days - I was just eating it up. My favorite story line was the one between Deanna and Eddie Bondo. I found that totally hot. It was one of the hottest love stories I've ever read."

Cyrus Sahukar

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

"It was the first book I read by Oscar Wilde and I have been a fan since. Every line is so beautifully written that you can revisit it at any stage in your life and it will always make you think."

Helen Hunt

The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy

"It took my breath away," Hunt says.

Abigail Breslin

Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Montgomery

"I just like Anne," Breslin says. "I think that she's really funny and that she's crazy, but I like her a lot."

Will Smith

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

"Coelho talks about the whole of the universe," Smith says, "and it's contained in one grain of sand. For years I've been saying that, and now it's really starting to expose itself to me. My own grain of sand has been a story. The next 10 years will be my peak of innovation in film-making and just as a human being."

Deepika Padukone

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

"I really liked it. It's a wonderful book."

Matt Damon

A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn

"I started reading passages from it in 1980, actually," says Damon. "I remember when we got the book and for Columbus Day I took it in and was allowed to read parts of [it] to the class."

Nancy Ajram

Savoire Vivre by Wolfgang Zelmer

Miley Cyrus

The Catcher in the Rye by  J D Salinger

Amr Diab

Al-Ayyam by Taha Hussein

Megan Fox

Kiss the Girls by James Patterson

Lady Gaga

Letters to a Young Poet by RM Rilke

Andy Garcia

Three Trapped Tigers by Guillermo Cabrera Infante

Jennifer Garner

Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh

Tom Hanks

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

Lindsay Lohan

A Million Little Pieces by James Frey

Kate Moss

The Beautiful and Damned by F Scott Fitzgerald

Haley Joel Osment

The Lord of the Rings by J R R Tolkien

Priya Paul

River of Smoke by Amitav Ghosh

Kal Penn

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

Daniel Radcliffe

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

Winona Ryder

The Catcher in the Rye by J D Salinger

Owen Wilson

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Compiled by Audrey Coutinho. Sources: CBS News, Gardiner (Maine, US) Public Library, Marie Claire, movieweb.com, The Sunday Times,teenhollywood.com, Time For Kids, The Washington Post, The Week, USA Today