Stephen Rebello was born in Fall River, Massachusetts and grew up in nearby Somerset. His mother was a hairdresser, his father a millworker; both were movie-lovers.

As Evelyn and Arthur Rebello’s only child, he was shamelessly over-indulged. He spent many of his waking hours with his nose stuck in a book and/or with his ears covered in headphones listening obsessively to every kind of music imaginable. HIs posterior was also often parked in a fifth row center seat at the double and triple-features playing at southern New England’s grandest movie palaces and fleapits alike.

He has transcendent memories of discovering Dickens, Bradbury, John Cheever and Shirley Jackson, the music of Beatles, Stones, and the folk movement, alongside movies from Hitchcock, Fellini, Antonioni, David Lean, Fred Zinnemann, Richard Lester and Arthur Penn. His childhood and adolescence were really nice. Easily-pleased rich folks paid him to sing on the radio, at parties and weddings. Even richer people paid him to model crazily expensive boys wear for local clothing stores. Sometimes the owners of those stores let him keep those threads — so long as he mentioned where he got them.

Four years at Somerset High School weren’t so terrible, either. At least two of those years were spent madly in love (nope, still not telling) and the other two were finally spent achieving academic excellence. Between part-time jobs sorting returned albums in a record factory and slinging sandwiches in an Italian deli (despite being unable to pronounce half of the menu items), he plotted his getaway.

He graduated UMass Dartmouth with double majors in literature and psychology. After two years of counseling patients and families at a Fall River, Massachusetts hospital and rehabilitation facility, he moved to Boston where he earned an MSW from Simmons College School of Social Work. While working as a supervising clinical social worker at a Harvard University-affiliated hospital, he began post-grad classes in psychology at Harvard. Off the clock, he was writing all the time – fiction, movie reviews, the works.

While on vacation in Los Angeles, his boyhood idol Alfred Hitchcock granted an in-person interview at his offices at Universal. The interview, published originally in the Boston underground favorite The Real Paper, turned out to be Hitchcock’s very last and subsequently got syndicated worldwide. Rebello decided to spend a year trying his hand at writing for a living and, relocating to Santa Monica, California, he got globe-hopping assignments from American Film, Cinefantastique, Cosmopolitan, GQ, The Los Angeles Times, Movieline (where he was Editor at Large), Playboy (Contributing Editor), Saturday Review, Southwest Art, Vibe and other national and international magazines many of which have since gone (sadly) extinct. (Don’t blame Rebello.)

Irene Mayer Selznick in The New York Times reviewed Rebello’s 1998 debut non-fiction book Reel Art: Great Posters From the Golden Age of the Silver Screen and, at an even held at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the book was honored as one of the best ever written on the subject of Hollywood.

Since its U.S. publication in 1990, Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho, Stephen Rebello’s second non-fiction book, has enjoyed multiple printings and has also been published in the U.K, Germany, Italy, Portugal, China, Japan, Korea and Australia. The book’s critical success led to speaking engagements in the U.S., London, Tokyo and more, as well as TV appearances on Good Morning America, Today and Larry King Live. Optioned over several years by a television network, several independent producers and major motion pictures studios, Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho was adapted for the big screen as Hitchcock, the 2012 Fox Searchlight feature film starring Anthony Hopkins, Helen Mirren and Scarlett Johansson. Rebello did several rewrites of the screenplay.

After writing for Disney Hyperion - The Art of Pocahontas, The Art of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Art of Hercules: The Chaos of Creation, he worked as screenwriter alongside several legendary Disney artists on development of three animated feature film projects. Rebello also developed for ABC-Disney a live-action musical version of Disney’s animated classic “Sleeping Beauty.”

2020 saw the publication of Dolls! Dolls! Dolls! Deep Inside Valley of the Dolls cited by Vogue and The Hollywood Reporter as one of the books of the summer, hailed as “meticulously detailed” and “written with a cinematic excitement” by Kirkus Reviews, as “full or surprises and even suspense” by The Washington Post, as “exuberant” and “loving” by Publishers Weekly and as “heady and colorful as the pulsating Pucci prints [Jacqueline] Susann so famously wore” by Vogue. Library Journal said “Rebello packs tons of information into this loving look at a cultural and cult phenomenon … Go ahead, indulge yourself. Fans will love! love! love! and newcomers will enjoy the Hollywood insider aspect.” An immediate bestseller in multiple categories on Amazon, the book went into a second printing weeks after publication.

Stephen Rebello lives in Southern California with his partner, four beloved felines and a backyard favorited by assorted wildlife. As you read this, he is more than likely writing, brooding over (or both) his next book and film projects while surrounded by aforementioned cats (who fully expect and probably deserve co-creative credit).