Somewhere in the Los Angeles area is a house filled with two children; three dogs; eight chickens; one fish, named Goldie Han Solo; one writer-actor-artist – and a former Hollywood starlet, Tiffani Thiessen.
If you or your children grew up in the 1990s, you’ve probably seen Thiessen on TV in one of her most well-known roles – the all-American girl-next-door Kelly Kapowski on the iconic teen series “Saved by the Bell.” Later, she played the emotionally troubled bad girl Valerie Malone on the hit drama “Beverly Hills 90210.”
Back then, Thiessen was known as Tiffani-Amber. Tell-all memoirs by former “Saved by the Bell” co-stars described the set as a dalliance-filled hormonal hotbed, while Thiessen’s years on “90210” saw no shortage of drama.
These days, Thiessen, 45, is living a quieter life that revolves around simple pleasures, like home-cooked meals and decorating with her children. On her eponymous website, stylized photos of themed birthday parties and recipes for comfort food like curried deviled eggs feature prominently.
She continues to act, most recently appearing on the Netflix show “Alexa and Katie,” a sitcom about a teenager with cancer, which premiered in 2018. However, Thiessen has gravitated toward the lifestyle space – a bit of a reinvention for an actress whose career has spanned more than three decades and who got her start in child modeling at age 8 while growing up in Long Beach.
“I have always loved all things creative, which included cooking and entertaining,” says Thiessen, who has vivid memories of spending time in the kitchen with her mother and grandmother and considers herself a home cook. “So, it was a natural place for me to go as well.”
Recently, she published a cookbook, “Pull Up a Chair: Recipes from My Family to Yours,” and hosted a cooking show, “Dinner at Tiffani’s,” on the Cooking Channel. Her latest project, “You’re Missing It!,” a children’s picture book she co-wrote with husband Brady Smith, hits shelves on April 30. It focuses on the special family moments that parents often miss when they don’t look up from their phones or unplug from technology as often as they should.
Thiessen says the book is semi-autobiographical: “The story was actually inspired by me telling my husband to put his phone down, that he was missing these special moments of our kids growing up. In our home, we are very big on putting our phones away when we are with the kids. Dinnertime is always spent with us around the table, talking about our day and connecting.”
For Thiessen and Smith – who is an illustrator and fine artist as well as an actor and writer – unplugging and being present with their kids entails anything from craft projects and bike rides to visiting a park with their dogs or cooking up a storm in the kitchen.
“Truly, if you just play into your kids’ imaginations, the possibilities are endless,” says Thiessen, who says food is one of the major ways she connects with her daughter, Harper Renn, 8, and son, Holt Fisher, 3.
“My kids love to bake with me; we’ll make healthy muffins, guacamole and fruit popsicles,” she says, adding that pizza is also a popular dish in their household. “I just lay out the ingredients, and the kids create their own – they call it ‘decorating.’”
She adds: “Food can truly change your mood. It’s almost like music… It can break [up] a fight. It could calm a child down. It could do so many things, and that’s what I love.”
Like its title, Thiessen’s cookbook – a collection of 125 stress-free recipes and family classics – is based on the idea of pulling up a chair and connecting with others over food in a casual setting.
In much the same way, “Dinner at Tiffani’s,” which hosted celebrity guests like Lance Bass and Thiessen’s former co-stars Jason Priestley and Mario Lopez, was intended to show how food can bring people together and how home entertaining can be less intimidating and more accessible.
The show, which ran from 2015 to 2017, began after she walked into the Food Network offices in New York, she says: “All on my own, I pitched the idea, and it took off from there. We had so much fun making that show, and I know the fans miss it as much as I do.”
But she isn’t ruling out the possibility of returning to TV.
“I would love to have another cooking show,” she says. “It is something I am very much working on right now actually. I have a few things in the works that I am hoping will all come together this year – cookbook number two, directing a bit more. You’ll have to wait and see.”
Currently, Thiessen’s husband also has a project in the works. Smith’s first graphic novel will soon join his portfolio of published illustrations and exhibited artworks. A Houston native, his acting resume includes credits on shows such as “Parks and Recreation” and “CSI: Miami” and even the TV crime series “White Collar,” on which Thiessen also played a role.
They first met on a blind date, set up by a mutual actor friend – who Thiessen revealed in a 2012 interview with Howard Stern was actually her “90210” co-star Jennie Garth. Previously, Thiessen was romantically linked to co-star Brian Austin Green, with whom she had a serious long-term relationship, and Richard Ruccolo, to whom she was engaged after meeting on the set of “Two Guys and A Girl.”
It’s a good thing Thiessen broke her own rule of never dating actors again. Smith proposed to her with an illustrated book of their love story, and they married at a private estate in Montecito in 2005.
Today, Thiessen is grateful for the direction life has taken her and the joys – and lessons – motherhood has brought her.
“The biggest thing motherhood has taught me is patience,” she says. “I feel like I learn from my kids daily. When you become a parent, you know you will be teaching them, but I truly didn’t realize the roles would be reversed as well. I try to just lead by example. To just be myself, be healthy and do all the things that make you beautiful from the inside out. That’s what my own mother taught me.” O