Even after nearly 50 years in showbusiness, Valerie Bertinelli has been cooking longer than she’s been acting.
In fact, the sitcom queen credits a childhood spent watching her Italian grandmother in the kitchen for her seamless transition from TV star to the Food Network star she is today.
As her beloved Nonni effortlessly whipped up gnocchi, cappelletti in brodo and warm fry bread – and the smells of simmering garlic and fresh basil permeated the air – Bertinelli remembers being utterly entranced.
“Cooking has always been part of my life, especially growing up in a large Italian family. There are pictures of me at 6 or 7 years old, just sitting around and waiting to help,” says Bertinelli, 60. “The kitchen was my mom’s office, and it was filled with recipes that she either came up with or cut out of magazines or got from my Nonni.”
Those recipes she learned growing up – along with a handful passed down from mothers-in-law both past (via Eddie Van Halen) and present (via husband of nine years Tom Vitale) – were featured in her 2012 cookbook, “One Dish at a Time.” In a move that would prove fortuitous for launching the next stage of her career, her manager suggested taking the cookbook to the Food Network and pitching a show that involved a tour of Italy.
“They passed on the idea, but they were interested in doing something else, called an ITK [in the kitchen]. Back then, I didn’t even know what an ITK was, but here we are now,” Bertinelli says with a laugh.
The rest, she says, is history. This January, after a hiatus due to the pandemic, Bertinelli will film the 12th season of her series, “Valerie’s Home Cooking,” for which she won two Daytime Emmys in 2019 for Outstanding Culinary Program and Outstanding Culinary Host.
Adam Rose/Television Food Network
She also keeps herself busy as co-host of the highest-rated series in the Food Network’s history, the “Kids Baking Championship,” which she was shooting at press time for a January release. Now in its ninth season, the nail-biting reality show features Bertinelli, alongside pastry chef Duff Goldman, judging the creations of child prodigy bakers from across North America.
It’s the latest chapter of a long and celebrated career that’s evolved from Bertinelli being a two-time Golden Globe-winning actress to becoming a multiple New York Times best-selling author to having a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame.
As a child actress, she achieved fame in her early teens after landing her first big break on the acclaimed TV series “One Day at a Time,” which ran from 1975 to 1984. She played the much-loved character Barbara Cooper alongside Bonnie Franklin and Mackenzie Phillips.
At 20, Bertinelli began a troubled marriage with bad-boy rocker Van Halen while battling drug abuse and eating disorders – which was in stark contrast to her on-screen image as America’s sweetheart. After spending more than 20 years together and having a son, Wolfgang, born in 1991, the couple eventually divorced. But they remain amicable today.
In the years that followed, Bertinelli dealt head-on with the body issues that began plaguing her as a child, becoming a spokeswoman for Jenny Craig and gracing the cover of People in a green bikini after losing 50 pounds.
As she started to become more interested in healthier ways of preparing food, she landed the role of Melanie Moretti on the critically acclaimed sitcom “Hot in Cleveland” and published two memoirs, 2008’s “Losing It: And Gaining my Life Back One Pound at a Time” and 2009’s “Finding It: And Satisfying My Hunger for Life Without Opening the Fridge.”
Bertinelli, who celebrated her milestone 60th birthday in April, only recently learned how to truly feel comfortable in her own skin, she says. It’s been a lifelong journey, one that began in fifth grade when a teacher patted her on the belly and suggested she “keep an eye on that.” That set off a quest to attain unreachable standards of perfection in an already unforgiving industry.
When asked how she now reconciles her love of cooking and eating with societal expectations, she replies simply: “I’m 60 now, so I really don’t care. At a certain age, you stop caring because it’s none of my business what other people think of me. I just wish I could have talked to myself when I started my career because I never believed I was beautiful or that my weight was OK. Even when I weighed 110 pounds and I was frickin’ adorable, I was being told I was fat by stupid people.
"I’m not going there anymore. I won’t do it because it’s no good for your brain. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt any less when someone decides to make a derogatory comment about my weight. I’m just separating their opinions from who I am as a person.”
This fall, Bertinelli plans to start writing once again, she says; her most recent cookbook, “Valerie’s Home Cooking,” was published in 2017. For the new project, she envisions a part cookbook, part memoir that will reflect on what it means to turn 60 and to be in the business for almost 50 years.
“I’ll be sharing some of the wisdom that I’ve learned along the way,” she says. “But there will definitely be recipes in there. Right now, I’m on a chicken thigh kick – experimenting with all kinds of flavor combinations like olives, tequila, lime, mushrooms and garlic – whatever moves me.”
She continues to have a special place in her heart for Indonesian cooking, taught to her by her former mother-in-law.
“Mrs. Van Halen, who is long gone now, taught me amazing recipes. I wish I could just call her up and ask how much of this or that you put in sambal goreng. But she never wrote down her recipes.”
Bertinelli believes in the importance of these culinary ties and suggests that people document favorite family recipes – and not just for posterity.
“I would encourage absolutely everyone to take the time to sit down and do an interview with their favorite cook in the house. Ask them what they do and how they do it. But it’s also really fun to just sit and hang and be a part of their life, too.”