Yes, chef! Actor Jeremy Allen White, who set the world on fire last week with that Calvin Klein underwear campaign, has more than doubled his money to return as Carmen ‘Carmy’ Berzatto for a third season of acclaimed drama The Bear.
White, 32, will start filming in Chicago at the end of February. Rumours abound that he is in the kitchen already, brushing up on his knife skills at the Michelin-starred restaurant Pasjoli in Santa Monica, California, which he lives nearby.
Sources say that he and the rest of the cast have received substantial pay increases to reprise their roles in the hit show, with White’s pay rocketing from $350,000 per episode to $750,000. His publicists did not return requests for comment.
Jeremy Allen White showcased his incredibly toned body for an ad campaign for Calvin Klein
Now he has more than doubled his money to return as Carmen ‘Carmy’ Berzatto for a third season of acclaimed drama The Bear
Jeremy Allen White stars as Carmen ‘Carmy’ Berzatto in The Bear, which can be streamed on Disney+ in the UK. His look is based on Marco Pierre White’s from the book White Heat
The pay bump means that New Yorker — and trained dancer — White, who scooped a second Golden Globe for the role on Sunday, is now in the upper echelons of the TV industry’s best-paid stars, alongside the likes of Kevin Costner and Brie Larson.
The Bear was named best musical or comedy TV series at the awards ceremony — and White’s co-star Ayo Edebiri won the best actress in a musical or comedy TV series gong.
The programme follows tormented chef Carmy, who takes over his brother’s sandwich restaurant and reopens it as a fine-dining establishment. The creators have confirmed that Carmy’s look — the messy curls and just-so white T-shirt — is based on the iconic style of British chef Marco Pierre White as pictured in the 1990 book White Heat.
Last season ended with Carmy being freed from the walk-in fridge he was trapped in. But it was not a happy moment (spoiler alert!). While cooling his heels he missed the friends and family service for his restaurant’s relaunch and managed to accidentally insult and break up with his girlfriend.
The show was a surprise success for FX when it debuted on Hulu to great acclaim in 2022, and on Disney+ in the UK. Last season, Jamie Lee Curtis, Bob Odenkirk, Will Poulter and Olivia Colman were guest stars, and there is speculation that even bigger names will pop up in season three.
Nick Grad, the president of FX Entertainment, describes the show as a ‘cultural phenomenon’.
Last year White split from his wife Addison Timlin, 32, and it has been reported that he agreed to daily alcohol testing when his daughters Ezer, five, and Dolores, three, are under his care, as a part of a custody agreement, plus to attending two Alcoholics Anonymous meetings a week. He is now dating the Spanish singer Rosalia, 31.
Brooklyn-born actor White is also starring alongside Zac Efron in The Iron Claw, a film about the Von Erich wrestling family. He put on 40lbs of muscle to play the role of troubled wrestler Kerry Von Erich, by eating ‘almost constantly’ and working out for months.
The film’s director Sean Durkin says that of all the cast, White had the most genuine talent in the ring. ‘He could wrestle professionally!’ Durkin said. ‘He had this natural ability that our wrestling coaches said was just really, really rare.’
White added that appearing in The Bear is his toughest gig so far. ‘I don’t know how you compare the intensity of the kitchen versus the intensity of professional wrestling. It seemed like the kitchen wouldn’t be competitive, like it would be an obvious answer, but I find both industries to be incredibly competitive and anxiety-ridden,’ he said.
Harris Dickinson, Zac Efron, Stanley Simons and Jeremy Allen White play brothers in The Iron Claw
‘I had less anxiety on the set of The Iron Claw than I did, I think, on the set of The Bear.’
British actor Harris Dickinson — who played a model in the 2022 Cannes winner Triangle Of Sadness — is also in The Iron Claw, playing David Von Erich. He fondly remembers going to WWE wrestling as a boy. ‘Whenever WWE came to London, I used to go and see it with my mate. I was a bit of a fanboy. I wanted [American wrestler] Rey Mysterio to kick me in the head,’ he said.
The film, by super-indie studio A24, is released in UK cinemas on February 9.
Tom Ford seeks something in the neighbourhood of £50m
Superstar designer Tom Ford is searching for a megabucks mansion in London — a year after selling his fashion business for $2.8 billion.
Ford, who had huge success with his own label after notable reigns at Gucci and Yves St Laurent, previously had a home in the capital in The Boltons — an enclave of white stucco mansions in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea — but sold it a decade ago.
He has a budget of £50 million-plus, and I hear he is looking to return to the same area.
His husband, the journalist Richard Buckley, died in 2021, aged 72; and the couple have a son Alexander, 11, who is at school in Los Angeles.
In November 2022, Ford sold the Tom Ford brand to Estee Lauder, with Forbes magazine writing he would personally collect $1.1 billion from the deal.
Tom Ford attends the GQ Men of the Year Party 2023
Worth $2.2 billion, Ford has been on a property buying and selling spree in recent years. In 2019 he sold his 20,000 acre ranch in New Mexico for $75 million. He bought a $15 million home on the Upper East Side in New York in 2019, followed by Jackie Kennedy’s childhood home in the Hamptons ($52 million) last year.
He also has a house in the Holmby Hills in LA ($40 million), and a residence in Palm Beach, Florida ($51 million).
Ford, 62, is also a player in the film world. He produced and directed A Single Man, starring Colin Firth, in 2005 and Nocturnal Animals, which starred Jake Gyllenhaal and Amy Adams, ten years later.
Taylor’s beau is ready for his close up
Taylor Swift outshone the A-list actors to be the biggest star at the Golden Globes this year (well, she is the biggest star in the world).
But she has dabbled in acting herself — in David O. Russell’s Amsterdam last year, and in the critically mauled film version of Cats in 2019.
And now it seems she may become part of an acting power couple, because her boyfriend, American football star Travis Kelce, is also seeking big screen stardom.
Kelce, who plays for the Kansas City Chiefs, has been on the books of the agency CAA since last summer and wants to follow in the footsteps of sport stars turned actors such as Tom Brady and John Cena.
With the backing of his famous girlfriend, and the huge boost in attention their romance has brought, he will surely get his chance to shine soon.
Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce have dinner at Waverly Inn on October 15, 2023
British leads for Holocaust film
The astonishing true story of the beginnings of the Holocaust is to be told in a movie which has just finished filming — with two British actors in the lead roles.
The World Will Tremble is based on the story of how a small band of prisoners escaped from the first Nazi death camp and provided the earliest eyewitness accounts of the systematic murder of Jews.
Some 300,000 are believed to have perished in the Chelmno camp in Poland; gassed in three adapted trucks and then dumped in mass graves.
There were only a handful of known survivors and the film tells the story of two of them. Solomon Wiener is played by Londoner Oliver Jackson-Cohen, best known for the film The Invisible Man.
Michael Podchlebnik is played by Jeremy Neumark Jones who was in Grantchester and Belgravia. His grandparents were German Jews who moved to England to escape the Nazis.
Jeremy Neumark Jones attends the ‘Belgravia’ photocall at Soho Hotel on February 17, 2020
Writer and director Lior Geller tells me he spent ten years researching the story, working with researchers from the Yad Vashem museum in Jerusalem.
Geller said: ‘Of the approximately 300,000 men, women and children sent to Chelmno between December 1941 and January 1945, only four survived. Of those, only three provided testimonies. In addition, the death camp was completely destroyed by the Germans three days before the arrival of the Red Army, in January 1945, to eliminate all evidence.’
The World Will Tremble was in production at the time of the Hamas massacre in Israel, on October 7. Geller adds: ‘It is a tremendous honour to share this story with the world, especially now.’
Blur’s Alex James says pop stars always check out what others have on their riders (a list of diva-ish demands) when socialising backstage. ‘I think everybody does,’ he said. ‘Whenever you go into someone’s dressing room you think: ‘Oh yeah, Curly Wurlys… good idea.’
He told the Wine Times podcast that his concert riders have included cheese, pants, socks, Kinder Eggs, champagne and Newcastle Brown Ale, but that his kids were overjoyed when he went through a phase of asking for Lego.
Rev Richard: Don’t confuse me this way
The Rev Richard Coles says that despite having the UK’s biggest selling single of 1986 with Don’t Leave Me This Way as one half of The Communards, and subsequent success on TV, radio and books, people still get him confused with other artists.
He said: ‘I was going up the M6 a while ago and I was in a dog collar and I stopped at the service station, got out of the car, wasn’t paying attention, and nearly got run over.’ Coles apologised and went inside.
‘The man clocked me and came over. He said: ‘It’s you! You provided the soundtrack to my youth. The woman who is now my wife, I met dancing to one of your records. I can’t wait to get home and tell her I nearly ran over one of the Pet Shop Boys’.’
Claire can’t laugh off thoughts of death…
Claire Foy — who plays the dead mum of Andrew Scott in the acclaimed arthouse film All Of Us Strangers — says she thinks about death every day.
The film is about Adam (Scott), whose parents died in a car crash when he was 12.
He visits the house he grew up in and finds his mum (Foy) and dad (Jamie Bell) still living there, stuck in a perpetual 1987.
Foy, who has a daughter Ivy, eight, with former husband Stephen Campbell Moore, said: ‘I’m an incredibly morbid person and think about dying on a daily basis . . . because I’m a single parent I’ve always said: ‘What’s going to happen?’
The film comes out on January 26.
British actress Claire Foy and Irish actor Andrew Scott arrive for the Los Angeles special screening of ‘All of Us Strangers,’ 2023
At just 5ft 4in, Tom Hollander has tended to bristle about being dubbed ‘pint-sized’ or a ‘sex thimble’. He once said: ‘I never thought of myself as being short.’
However his stature has made him the perfect choice to play writer Truman Capote, 5ft 3in in his socks, in a forthcoming big budget drama Feud: Capote vs The Swans, produced by Ryan Murphy, of Glee, Ratched and Halston fame.
Actresses including Demi Moore, Naomi Watts, Diane Lane and Calista Flockhart play the socialites whom Capote betrayed, horribly, in his book Answered Prayers. The incomplete novel was published posthumously, but damning excerpts appeared in his lifetime.
Warren Beatty and Annette Bening’s 23-year-old daughter Ella appears in the movie, too; as Capote’s assistant. The show will go out on Disney+ this spring.
Tom Hollander and Ella Beatty are seen at the film set of the ‘Feud: Capote and the Women’ TV Series on January 24, 2023
Actor Sam Rockwell, who plays a spy in the new Matthew Vaughn film Argylle, is learning to keep his mouth shut around stuntmen. ‘Those women and men are extraordinary badasses,’ Rockwell said.
‘I clipped my leg in one scene, just a stupid little thing but it hurt for days. I was complaining about it to one of the stunt doubles, and he was like: ‘Yeah, I once drowned filming Game Of Thrones.’ He was dead for three minutes. I stopped complaining after that.’
Argylle, which also stars Henry Cavill and Dua Lipa, is out in cinemas from February 2 and will then stream on Apple TV+.
