Voted People magazine’s “Sexiest Man Alive” in 1987, actor, author and entrepreneur Harry Hamlin has worked in television, film and on stage for more than four decades. He currently stars in AMC’s new 30-minute show, In the Kitchen with Harry Hamlin, coming to AMC+ in July. The five-episode show is a combination cooking, dining and documentary with VIP guests, comedy and real recipes. Hamlin is also filming the second season of Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches, in which he plays Cortland Mayfair.Originally known for his role in the television series
LA Law (for which he received three Golden Globe nominations), Hamlin was also nominated for a Primetime Emmy for Mad Men . Among his countless other roles, he played Perseus in the fantasy filmClash of the Titans .A graduate of Yale University, Hamlin went on to earn a Master of Fine Arts degree from the American Conservatory Theater. He is also the author of
Full Frontal Nudity: The Making of an Accidental Actor , a memoir of his early years. Additionally, Hamlin is an advocate of fusion energy and is the co-founder of TAE Technologies (formerly known as Tri Alpha Energy), a company developing a clean, non-radioactive fusion energy generator.He and his actress wife, Lisa Rinna (
The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills), have two adult daughters, and Hamlin has an older son with actress Ursula Andress. We caught up with the Sexiest Man Alive at his home in Los Angeles.Exclusive interview with Food & Travel magazine
Let’s talk about cooking. Did your mother or father cook?
Yes. I was raised right after World War II, so they were used to rationing. My father would cook exotic things like beef tongue, and then the next week, pickled beef tongue, and then oxtails, which is just a cow's tail, and then the next week, pickled oxtails. We had a lot of interesting food when I was growing up.
If you have already read
Ulysses James Joyce's Leopold Bloom is first described as a man who "ate with relish the internal organs of beasts and birds." My father was the same, in that he loved internal organs. So he was always having kidneys, ox hearts, or brains. For example, every Christmas morning, before you could open your presents, you had to eat his brains with burnt butter; it was a Christmas tradition. Over the years, we must have developed a taste for his brains. When did you become interested in cooking?
We have a cabin in Canada that has been in my family for 102 years. Back then, it was very isolated. There were no restaurants, so if you wanted to eat, you had to cook. And that's when I started cooking, in my late teens.
How did you learn? Did you watch your father?
By trial and error, actually. To this day, I have never seen a cooking show where there was a competition. I'm not interested in that at all.
And your wife doesn't cook. I understand that on your first date, you cooked for her.
Yes.
So how did this show, In the
Kitchen with Harry Hamlin ?AMC asked me to do a cooking show and I said, "Are you kidding me? Why would you want me to do a cooking show?" I guess it's because I made lunch for Lisa's castmates in
The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills . A few years before that, I had cooked Bolognese for them, and they loved the food and it got out that I was a cook. So an executive's wife who had seen the show said, "Harry Hamlin has to do a cooking show for AMC." They came to me out of the blue. If someone had come to me two years ago and said I was going to do a cooking show, I would have said they were crazy. I told them I would only do it if my niece, the classically trained chef Renee Guilbault, would be my wingwoman to keep me honest.Your niece said she was only here to protect you. Is that true?
No, she's here because she's an expert chef. With her by my side, I can't make too many mistakes.
Thanks to
The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills , you became known as the king of Bolognese. How did that happen?When I made lunch for Lisa and her castmates, I decided to make bolognese because I thought it would be easy and tasty. They loved it, and it became a thing on the show. I went on
Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen and on The Today Show. They both taste-tested it live and loved it. Now I'm in the process of putting it out there. Hopefully we'll have a batch ready to go soon because stores like Whole Foods are doing their taste test for next year. To get it out in stores in 2025, it needs to be ready now. I understand that Julia Child once pinched your butt. How did that happen?
I didn't know it at the time, but it turned out she was a fan of mine. She had asked my manager to present her with an award at an awards show. She's quite tall. At the time, she was using a cane and asked me to help her up the podium. Halfway up, she stopped, reached out and pinched my butt. She told me she felt like pinching it. It was pretty funny.
Can you explain to me what In the Kitchen with Harry Hamlin is?
I don't know exactly what it is. I don't know if it's a show about my niece and I's relationship or a show about our guests who come to dinner and share the food that we've cooked. It's kind of an amalgam of all of those things. Renee and I spend the first 10 or 15 minutes preparing the food and cooking, and then the rest of the time is usually spent with the guests who have come to dinner with us and who hopefully enjoyed the food.
You ask your guests a lot of questions. Who are these guests?
Bobby Moynihan (
Saturday Night Live), Ted Danson (Curb Your Enthusiasm), Mary Steenburgen (Book Clubb), Dean Norris (breaking Bad), Tongayi Chirisa (Anne Rice's Mayfair Witches) and Ed Begley Jr. (Better Call Saul), among others.How does the conversation with the guests go?
These people are all very successful, so I could ask them how they got their first break in the industry. We've all been around a long time, and people don't know that we all started hungry, living in an attic somewhere on food stamps. It's always fun to find out how someone got their first break.
What is the format of the show?
We go through each recipe, so you walk away with the recipe and how to make it. There's no one right way to do it. We made homemade spaghetti, which I've never made before, so you learn how to do that. You get a lot of little kitchen hacks. Renee taught me how to cut an onion. I've been cutting an onion wrong for 40 years.
Is there a theme for each show?
I don't know if it's based on a theme. It's based on an attempt to investigate how to prepare dishes that I make that seem to work for my family, but I don't use a recipe. I just throw stuff out there.
What do you think is the most important takeaway from this show? Is it your presence? Your conversations with the guests? The recipes?
All of the above. That's it.
Unrelated, I know you're a big fan of nuclear fusion energy. Tell me about that.
I'm the founder of a company that I started 26 years ago. We're a startup, but we've raised over a million dollars and we hope to be on the path to clean energy for the planet. It's been my passion for at least 40 years. As Kennedy said, we don't do things because they're easy. Nuclear fusion is really hard to do. But if anyone can do it, it's going to be this particular group of nuclear physicists and engineers. They always say fusion is 30 years away. It's probably going to be a few more years before we can actually put electricity on the grid. Most scientists are interested in energy, electrons, and nuclear energy, and they know that fusion is really the holy grail. It's the answer, the way humans are going to get our energy for the next million years. But it will take a lot of research and development, a lot of money, a lot of engineering, a lot of brainpower and a lot of trial and error to get there. It is a big challenge.
Will you see it in your lifetime?
I hope so. I mean, I didn't think 26 years ago that it would take 26 years or more. But as we went along, we realized that what we were trying to do was so enormous. We're trying to create a microscopic sun in the laboratory suspended by magnetic fields. And doing that is very, very delicate work.
You've done so much in four decades. What legacy do you want to leave?
I think the greatest legacy you can leave is your children. Our children are amazing; they are professionals and they are successful. I am very proud of them. They have good heads on their shoulders and they are very down to earth. As far as being a cook, I don't think that should be my legacy.
– Article and interview with Margie Goldsmith
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