Voted by People Magazine in 1987 as the “Sexiest Man Alive,” actor, author, and entrepreneur Harry Hamlin has been working in TV, film, and on stage for over four decades. He is presently the star of a new 30-minute AMC show, In the Kitchen with Harry Hamlin, which will be available on AMC+ in July. The five-episode show is a combination of cooking, dinner party, and documentary complete with VIP guests, humor, and real recipes. Hamlin is also shooting the second season of Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches, in which he plays Cortland Mayfair.
Originally known for his role in the TV series, L.A. Law (for which he received three Golden Globe nominations), Hamlin also earned a Primetime Emmy nomination for Mad Men. Among his countless other roles, he starred as Perseus in the fantasy film, Clash of the Titans.
A Yale University graduate, Hamlin next earned a Master of Fine Arts 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. In addition, Hamlin is an advocate for fusion power and is co-founder of TAE Technologies (formerly known as Tri Alpha Energy), a company developing a clean, non-radioactive fusion power 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.
Food & Travel Magazine Exclusive Interview
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, then the next week, pickled beef tongue, then oxtails, which is just a cow’s tail, then the next week, pickled ox tails. We had lots of interesting food when I was growing up.
If you’ve ever read Ulysses by James Joyce, Leopold Bloom is described for the first time as a man who “ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowl.” My father was the same way, in that he liked inner organs. So, he was always picking up kidneys or beef hearts or brains. For example, every Christmas morning, before we could open the presents, you had to eat his brains with burned butter; that was a Christmas tradition. Over the years, we had to develop a taste for his brains.
When did you become interested in cooking?
We have a cabin in Canada that’s been in my family for 102 years. Back in the day, it was very remote. There were no restaurants, so if you wanted to eat, you had to cook. And that’s when I started to cook, in my late teens.
How did you learn? Were you watching your father?
Trial and error, really. To this day, I’ve never seen a cooking show where they’re in a competition. It doesn’t interest me in the least.
And your wife doesn’t cook. I understand on your first date, you cooked for her.
Yes.
So how did this show, In the Kitchen with Harry Hamlin, come to be?
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 was because I cooked lunch one time for Lisa’s castmates on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. A few years before that, I cooked some Bolognese for them, and they loved the food and it kind of got out into the zeitgeist that I was a cook. So, then some executive’s wife who’d seen the show said, ”You’ve got to have Harry Hamlin do a cooking show for AMC.” They came to me out of the blue. If anybody had come to me two years ago and said I’d be doing a cooking show, I’d say they were insane. I told them I’d only do it if my niece, classically trained Chef Renee Guilbault, would be my wing person to keep me honest.
Your niece has said she’s only there as your security blanket. Is that true?
No, she’s there because she’s an expert chef. With her by my side, I can’t make too many mistakes.
Because of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, you became known as the King of Bolognese. How did that happen?
When I cooked lunch for Lisa and her castmates, I decided to cook Bolognese because I thought that would be easy and tasty. They loved it, and then it became a thing on the show. I went on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen and on The Today Show. They both tasted it live and loved it. Now I’m in the process of actually getting it out. Hopefully, we’ll have a batch ready to go soon because stores like Whole Foods do their taste test for the following year. To get it in stores for 2025, we have to have it ready now.
I understand 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’d asked my manager for me to present her an award at an awards ceremony. She’s quite tall. At this point, she was using a cane and asked me to help her to the podium. Halfway out, she stopped, reached out, and pinched my butt. She told me she’d been wanting to pinch it. It was kind of funny.
Can you explain what In the Kitchen with Harry Hamlin is?
I’m not sure exactly what it is. I don’t know if it’s a relationship show between me and my niece or a show about our guests who come to dinner and share the food that we’ve cooked. It’s kind of an amalgamation of all those things. Renee and I spend the first 10 or 15 minutes preparing food and cooking and then the remainder of the time is usually with the guests who have come to have dinner with us, and hopefully they liked the food.
You ask your guests many questions. Who are these guests?
Bobby Moynihan (Saturday Night Live), Ted Danson (Curb Your Enthusiasm), Mary Steenburgen (Book Club), Dean Norris (Breaking Bad), Tongayi Chirisa (Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches) and Ed Begley Jr. (Better Call Saul), among others.
What is the conversation with the guests like?
These people are all very successful, so I might ask how they got their first break in the business. We’ve all been around for a long time, and people don’t know that we all started hungry, living in a garret somewhere on food stamps. It’s always fun to find out how somebody got their first break.
What’s the format of the show?
We go through each recipe, so you come away with the recipe and how to prepare it. There’s no one right way. We’ve made homemade spaghetti, which I had never done 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 theme based. It’s based on trying to investigate how to make dishes that I make and seem to work for my family, but I don’t use a recipe. I just throw stuff in.
What do you think is the most important take-away from this show? Is it your presence? Your conversations with the guests? The recipes?
All of the above. It’s everything.
Not related, I know you’re a huge fan of nuclear fusion energy. Tell me about that.
I’m a founder of a company I brought into existence 26 years ago. We’re a startup, but we’ve raised over a million relevant dollars and, hopefully, we’re on the path of clean energy for the planet. This has been my passion for at least 40 years. Like Kennedy said, we don’t do stuff because it’s easy. Nuclear fusion is really hard to do. But if anybody can do it, this particular group of nuclear physicists and engineers are going to be the ones to do so. They always say that fusion is 30 years away. It’s probably going to be a few more years before we get to actually be able to put power into the grid. Most scientists deal with energy, and electrons, and nuclear energy, and know that fusion is really the Holy Grail. That’s going to be the answer, how human beings will get our energy for the next million years. But it’s going to take a lot of research and development, a lot of money, a lot of engineering, a lot of brain power, and a lot of trial and error to get there. It’s 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’re trying to do is so huge. We’re trying to basically create a microscopic sun in the laboratory suspended by magnetic fields. And to do that is very, very, delicate work.
You’ve done so much over four decades. What do you want your legacy to be?
I think the greatest legacy that anyone can leave is their children. Our kids are great; they’re professionals and successful. I’m very proud of them. They’ve got great heads on their shoulders, and they’re very grounded. As far as being a cook, I don’t think that should be my legacy. •
-Article and Interview by Margie Goldsmith