Eight things we learned from Stanley Tucci's Desert Island Discs

Stanley Tucci is an actor, director, writer and food lover, whose many screen roles include playing a fashion bigwig in The Devil Wears Prada, a devoted spouse to Meryl Streep in Julie and Julia, and a dystopian gameshow host in The Hunger Games.

He was born into an Italian-American family and as a young actor he became frustrated that casting directors always wanted him to play Mafia roles. In response he co-wrote and starred in Big Night, the tale of two Italian brothers running a restaurant. The film drew on his other great love – food. He has written recipe books and both series of his acclaimed food and travel TV show, Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy, are available on BBC iPlayer.

Here’s what we learned from his Desert Island Discs...

1. Every day starts and ends the same way

"[Food] is the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning,” says Stanley, before adding, “and the last thing I think about when I go to bed at night!”

“Sitting around a table with the people that you love and having good food, whether you made it yourself or you're in a restaurant, it's just one of the best things anybody could ever do.”

2. He sees a deep connection between cooking and creativity

"[Cooking] is an artistic process, isn't it?” says Stanley. “There are certain techniques that you learn - how to chop, how to sauté something. But after that, it's really creative and in that way it's very much like acting, it's very much like painting, it's very much like composing, very much like writing.”

“There are certain parameters, and then it's up to you to be creative within those parameters and sometimes go: ‘Oh, I don't need that parameter, we’ve got to get rid of that parameter!’”

3. His love of cooking was inspired by the women in his family

Stanley can immediately identify the roots of his interest in food: “watching [my mother] cook, and watching her cook with her mother too… She never stopped learning and she never stopped watching cooking shows, which were starting to blossom then.”

“We used to watch [TV chef and culinary legend] Julia Child together... And then without question – this is what I love about my mother – she'd go: ‘Oh, well, that's too much butter! I wouldn’t do that.’ And then all of a sudden she would just go: ‘Isn't she wonderful? Isn't she just wonderful? Don't you just love her?’”

4. He's enjoyed working with – and cooking with – Meryl Streep

Decades after watching Julia Child with his mother, Stanley found himself cast as Child’s husband Paul in the 2009 biographical film Julie and Julia, with Meryl Streep playing Julia. Stanley suggested that they could prepare for their husband and wife roles by spending an evening together in the kitchen:

“I said [to Meryl], ‘Look, I don't want to sound too methody, but can we just get together once and cook together?’ And she goes, ‘Yeah, OK, we'll do it.’”

“It turned out, actually, OK. It’s just that we served dinner about three hours later than we thought we were going to serve dinner!”

“[We made] blanquette de veau, which is a creamy veal stew as per Julia's recipe - imagine how rich it was, how much butter was in there, how much cream. And then she made a tarte tatin that was delicious. And then I made an attempt at some kind of vegetable thing but it didn't work. We had it at Meryl's apartment, and it was just great fun.”

5. He had the best packed lunches to take to school

Stanley still recalls with great relish the flavours – and the size – of the food he’d eat daily as a schoolboy: “It was amazing. Let's say, if we had veal cutlets for dinner, breaded veal cutlets, the next day I'd have the veal cutlet as a sandwich, but I'd have it not on white bread, I’d have half a loaf of Italian bread - and I was 12! And then I'd have eggplant [aubergine] parmigiana. You'd have that as a sandwich.”

“I couldn't have a lunch box once I was a teenager, I had to bring a grocery bag filled with my lunch because I ate like a horse and the sandwiches were too big to fit into a lunch box!”

6. And food played a big part in the film which changed his career

After college Stanley started to work as an actor, but soon felt that he’d reached a dead end.

“Because I was Italian-American, you were cast as a bad guy… I got to a point where I said ‘I'm not going to play any mafiosi anymore.’”

Stanley took matters into his own hands and co-wrote a film that he went on to star in and co-direct, which was released to much acclaim in 1996. Big Night centres on two Italian brothers running a New Jersey restaurant.

To prepare for the role Stanley spent time learning the business from one of New York’s top Italian chefs: “He would teach me: teach me how to cut, he would teach me how to make a frittata... and sometimes I would just stop by and just watch. But then after Big Night, I didn't think that I was going to become as interested in food as I am, I didn't know it was going to have as big a part in my life as it does now.”

7. He met his second wife thanks to another film he made with Meryl Streep

The highly successful film The Devil Wears Prada starred Meryl Streep as the fearsome editor of a top fashion magazine, with Stanley cast as the magazine’s art director, and Emily Blunt as one of the editor’s assistants.
At the film’s premiere, Stanley met Emily’s sister Felicity, a literary agent.

Stanley was married to his first wife Kate for 14 years until she sadly died from breast cancer in 2009. After her death he didn’t work for almost a year, and in the following years he wasn’t sure if he or his children were ready for him to start a serious relationship.

“I was afraid to get into a relationship and I kept trying to break it off,” says Stanley of the time he began to date Felicity.

"I'm 21 years older than she is and I didn't want to feel old for the rest of my life! But I knew that this was an incredibly special person.”

For his desert island, Stanley has chosen the recording of A Foggy Day in London Town by Frank Sinatra, because it was the first dance when he and Felicity married in 2012.

“Felicity has been so incredible, taking on a widower and three children whose mother died. That's a huge thing at a very young age. If anybody made things better for all of us, it's her. She's the one.”

8. He’d like his next TV project to focus on the food of his adopted home

Stanley has made two series of Searching for Italy, where he travels from region to region, exploring local culinary traditions and dishes.

So where would he like to go for his next food journey? “I want to do the UK... because I find it fascinating,” says Stanley, who is now based in London.

“I think there's so much here to offer. Is there a lot of bad food? Yeah, there's a lot of bad food in Italy too... And I've eaten some of it.”

“But the produce that you have here is amazing. In London in particular, I think the options are much greater than any other city I've been to so far, much greater than New York.”

He acknowledges that many Americans are sceptical about British food, but says that he always replies: “You live in America. Are you kidding me? Have you tasted your food?”