Ah, food. When it comes to dining in or out, we all have our own little peccadillos, which may not be noticed by anyone except those closest to us. But if you’re one of the lucky few who breathe the rarefied air of the Hollywood Hills, things are different—and everyone notices. Due to the pressure to be thin, beautiful/handsome, sexy—and under the constant threat of paparazzi—many celebrities adopt extreme eating habits. Or sometimes they just can’t help it, and, when the stress gets to them, lash out at food industry workers.
For 10 years as the deputy editor of the New York Post’s Page Six column, I chronicled the lives of the rich and famous. I ate at their tables, and split the check at restaurants with them. And I’m here to tell you, we all have some weird eating issues. For your enjoyment, we’ve compiled a list of a few of the stranger quirks of our favorite entertainers.
This Oscar-winning actress has very specific demands when it comes to her diet. She once stayed at a Hollywood hotel and, according to a former staff member, insisted that a lone roasted chicken be brought to her at exactly 12:15 p.m. The chicken was to be wheeled into the room by a staff member, who would drop it off on a desk. There was no sign of the actress, although the staffers knew she was in the room somewhere, as “she hadn’t left, so she must have been hiding.” At exactly 3:15 the staffers were instructed to pick up the chicken carcass, which had been picked clean. “It was like that scene in Jurassic Park,” the staffer said. “Where the goat was tied up and left for the T. rex.” Word is that was all the actress would eat all day every day.
This Hollywood staple, whose weight is constantly chronicled on gossip sites, tries her best to be classy but just can’t help that she’s a redneck at heart. When she comes to New York, she will go to dinners at the most expensive places—like Per Se or Jean Georges—with agents or TV executives, but afterward will immediately call Virgil’s BBQ and order up a huge plate of ribs, mashed potatoes, and all the fixin’s. A friend said, “The portions at all those fancy places are just so small. She thinks they’re like appetizers, and those restaurants just never satisfy her—but she has to go because that’s what she thinks people want her to do.”
Which model/actress maintains her weight with a special smoothie she drinks at every meal? Every time she eats out, she will pull a large plastic cup from her bag, which contains a nefarious liquid laxative she calls her “smooth move.” After every meal she disappears in the bathroom for a while, explaining that with the help of her shake, “you eat a burger, a burger comes out.” This might also explain her notoriously bad temper.
This Oscar-nominated actor is a bit of an eccentric. He once went to the racetrack with a group of friends. It was a fancy group and one of the friends owned several horses, so they sat in the VIP restaurant section of the track. While lunch was being served, the actor, who could have used a bath, looked at the woman next to him and said, “Wanna see something?” and proceeded to put his dirty feet on the table, proudly displaying his toes, which had been painted like little American flags. “I did them myself!” the actor bragged while the woman gagged.
Which singer turned actress eats like she’s pregnant? She likes to show up at ritzy Los Angeles restaurants and ignore their carefully prepared menus. Instead, she will order a plate of French fries then dip them in a bowl of maple syrup while downing bottles of Champagne. She’s also a fan of everything fried and has a hard time eating healthy—which would explain the recent weight gain.
Which mega action star can’t go anywhere without his bodyguards? He will show up at L.A. eateries with a crew of G-men in tow and while he eats, they surround his table. “It’s like announcing he’s in the joint. Not exactly unobtrusive,” sighed a restaurateur. Meanwhile, he’s a bit of a control freak. He’s always very “pumped up”—physically and psychologically—but it’s not due to drugs. He will order “at least“ 12 Coca-Colas during a meal and never touches a drop of alcohol as, “he doesn’t like to be out of control or drunk but because he has so much caffeine, he’s always very hyper and intense.”
Which super producer will only order diet, caffeine-free Coca-Cola—and insist it be brought to him in a closed can and opened in front of him at the table? That way, he can be assured that no other drink will ever accidentally pass his lips.
In Hollywood, oftentimes it seems the bigger you are, the lower your self-esteem. There is a manager, who is almost as famous as his clients and has repped the biggest names in the business. This manager has been known to pick on people who are in a lesser position than him. Almost every time he dines out, if he is in a bad mood or feels like he is not being paid the respect he thinks he deserves, he tries his hardest to get someone fired—even if it’s for something as simple as a waiter being too slow to fill a water glass or a maître d’ not being “courteous” enough (read: kissing his you-know-what enough). Meanwhile, a Hollywood doyenne who dabbles as a contributor for a Hollywood magazine has this same problem. She has been known to walk into eateries and start screaming if she feels someone else has been given a better table—she has also been known to reduce hostesses to tears by threatening to get them fired and yelling at them in front of other customers.
Which TV personality who is known to have been to the far corners of the earth and brags about how she will “eat anything”—doesn’t actually eat much? She has been known to pack PowerBars wherever she goes because she doesn’t actually eat foreign food. Instead she will “pretend to eat and then spit it out in my napkin. I have to have PowerBars or I would starve!”
Which celebrity chef actually refused to prepare food for Laura Bush? According to our source, the then First Lady came into the chef’s eatery and ordered a meal and the chef—an anti-war activist who was furious with President Bush over the war in Iraq—had to sit it out and have his sous-chef prepare the meal as he “didn’t trust himself not to do something awful to the food. It was his form of defiance.”
Which Golden Globe winner doesn’t have many fans in the restaurant industry? He’s known to relentlessly and creepily hit on pretty waitresses and doesn’t like to part with much of his hard-earned cash on tips. In L.A., people put up with it—but not so much in the rest of the country. He once walked into a pricey eatery in Aspen and demanded a last-minute table for himself and a large group of friends on a busy Saturday night. He was asked to never return after he left a DVD of his TV show on the table in lieu of a tip. Word is the DVD was also thrown at his head as a parting shot from the angry waiter.
Which diva, whose biopic will hit screens in 2013, loves Carnegie Deli? Our spies saw the hefty lass loading up one afternoon, ordering “a pound” each of pastrami, corned beef and roast beef—before wondering, “should I get a vegetable?” Two seconds later, she looked at the man behind the counter and said, “a pound of potato salad!”
Paula Froelich is a New York–based journalist and New York Times best-selling novelist. She is currently working on another novel while traveling the world and trying to placate her dachshund, Karl.