"My body is a blueprint of my life, of every tragedy, emotional or physical," she states. Whether it's the stitches she got from a handsome doctor when she sliced herself while cutting a potato in Corsica, or the impossible-to-miss seven-inch-long scar on her arm, the result of a car accident in Malibu when she was 14. She wears it proudly now, a badge of survival; and when editor Anna Wintour asked her in 2001 to write about it for US Vogue, she penned an eloquent piece about self-doubt and beauty, and the transformative power of one man's vision.
She acted in the movie The Caribbean, for which she had to gain 20 pounds, and which was a catalyst in cementing her culinary career. "Oh, how easy it was to put on the pounds! And then, of course, I had to lose it. I was 27, and it was the first time I'd had to think about my weight. I wanted to lose it in a healthy way, there was no way I was going to be able to follow a diet."
