Celebs who cook: Talented on screen and in the kitchen
We’ve all heard the term “starving artist,” but clearly that doesn’t apply to these folks – at least not now.
Many actors and musicians have waited tables in New York or Los Angeles until they got their big break, some have even cooked professionally and still others have gotten training. And it’s a skill they’ve used since, either by writing a cookbook, hosting a cooking show or just preparing meals for their friends and families. Their love of the culinary arts is plainly front and center.
Take, for instance, Emmy Rossum of “Shameless,” airing Sundays on Showtime. She’s a regular viewer of cooking shows, has taken classes at Le Cordon Bleu and admits to being somewhat of an experimenter in the kitchen. Not a fan of baking, she prefers cooking because it doesn’t require so much precision and it allows her to be what she calls a “creative mess.”
Trisha Yearwood, by contrast, has had no formal training but is clearly an accomplished chef. The award-winning singer and wife of fellow country artist Garth Brooks evidences a passion for hearty fare on her Food Network series “Trisha’s Southern Kitchen,” and in her two cookbooks “Georgia Cooking in an Oklahoma Kitchen” and “Home Cooking With Trisha Yearwood.”
Valerie Bertinelli of “Valerie’s Home Cooking” is another Food Network personality whose skills came by doing. She learned to cook as a child at the side of her grandmother and aunt, watching them roll out gnocchi and cappelletti, and the lessons stuck. A cooking series and several cookbooks later, it’s fair to say the Golden Globewinning “One Day at a Time” actress has found herself a second career.
On the lighter side foodwise is Gwyneth Paltrow. The Academy Award-winning “Shakespeare in Love” actress is a dyed-in-the-wool home chef, author of a number of food-related books and cookbooks and an advocate for healthy eating. She also runs the lifestyle website Goop.com, which touches on food issues.
Another Oscar winner with chops in the kitchen is Emma Stone, for whom food prep is a passion as well as therapy. The “La La Land” actress turned to baking to manage her anxiety growing up and it turned into something more. She’s even talked about opening her own bakery one day.
Kris Jenner of “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” fame came to her love of the culinary arts by necessity. A wife and a mother at a young age, she needed to pick up skills to feed her family and herself. That led her to go to cooking school and eventually write the cookbook “In the Kitchen With Kris.”