If you only know her from Food Network, you don't know Valerie Bertinelli. She
was a teen sitcom star. She married a rock god. And that just scratches the surface.
Valerie Bertinelli was born in Wilmington, Delaware in 1960.
She was the third of five children, born to Nancy and Andrew Bertinelli. Her father's
job as an executive at General Motors required him to relocate often, meaning Valerie's family
moved frequently as she was growing up. To this day, Bertinelli refers to herself as a "GM brat."
In the early 1970s, when she was in her early teens, Bertinelli's father was transferred
to a General Motors plant in Detroit and the whole family packed up and moved to Michigan.
Not long after, Andrew was reassigned again, this time to California. Although all the moving made
it hard for Bertinelli to make friends, this move would prove to be particularly fortuitous.
While living in California, Bertinelli befriended the daughter of a television producer.
Unbeknownst to her at the time, this would prove to be the start to her ascension to stardom.
Valerie Bertinelli's parents had four sons, but Valerie herself has only known three of them.
According to People, when Bertinelli's mother was still pregnant with her,
her brother Mark died suddenly. He was just 17 months old. Bertinelli, however,
didn't learn about her brother's death until she was a teenager. The actress told People,
"The subject was too painful. My parents kept the tragedy locked inside."
While keeping it a secret may have been hard to understand at the time,
Bertinelli learned to appreciate the way her parents handled the trauma
years later when she became a mother herself. Bertinelli said to People:
"I was holding [my son] Wolfie who was 17 months old and thinking
how did my mom survive? She had to keep going and I learned that from her.
She had to carry on. She had a very hard life. She always tried to make the best of everything."
Although she wouldn't come to be known for her culinary skills until later in life,
Valerie Bertinelli's love of cooking started at a very early age. It was Bertinelli's
family that introduced her to the culinary world. Bertinelli told the Food Network:
"I [remember] sitting on the stool watching my nonni roll out gnocchi,
cappelletti and fry bread, and asking me what I wanted in the fry bread,
whether I wanted it sweet or savory, jelly or cheese. I still have her rolling pin."
Her mother, who always cooked all three of the family's meals each day from scratch,
was another big culinary influence. Bertinelli told the Food Network:
"My mom had a wonderful risotto that I still haven't perfected. She really makes a mean roast
chicken. I mean, it was perfect every single time, and I still don't know how she did it."
After moving to southern California, Valerie Bertinelli befriended a neighborhood girl
who just so happened to be the daughter of a television producer. She was quickly inspired to
enroll in acting classes at the Tami Lynn School of Artists. The program helped Bertinelli land
her first acting job, appearing in an episode of the television show Apple's Way in 1974.
Although it was a small role, it was enough to catch the eye of famed television producer Norman
Lear, who encouraged her to audition for a new show he was working on called One Day at a Time.
Bertinelli tried out, got the job, and her life was never the same.
One Day at a Time premiered in 1975, when Bertinelli was just 15 years old. The show,
a comedy about a divorced mother raising her family, was an immediate hit. Bertinelli's
role as witty Barbara Cooper earned her two Golden Globe awards and launched her to stardom.
"I'm Carbie Booper. I mean, I'm Barbie Cooper."
In 2001, more than a decade and a half after One Day at a Time ended its nine-season run in 1984,
Bertinelli proved her staying power by landing another starring role on a hit show, this time
on Touched by an Angel. She would appear in nearly 50 episodes before the drama wrapped up in 2003.
When Valerie Bertinelli woke up on August 28, 1980, she had no idea she would be meeting her
husband that day, says Page Six. She hardly thought that he would be a world-famous
musician — but that's precisely what happened. That night, Bertinelli's brothers invited her
to a Van Halen concert, where they were hoping her celebrity status would get them backstage.
As it turns out, Bertinelli was happy to oblige. The actress told Oprah:
"I took a look at the 8-track cassette that was in the back of my Corvette [...] and I saw a
picture of [Eddie Van Halen], and I went, 'Oh, yeah, I'll be going. He's a cutie.'"
The plan worked and the group got backstage, where Bertinelli came face to face with Eddie
for the first time. She fell in love immediately. A few days after the concert, Van Halen invited
Bertinelli out and the two were inseparable from then on. And, in April 1981, a mere eight months
after that initial meeting, the famous couple got married. Bertinelli was only 20 years old.
Valerie Bertinelli's marriage to Eddie Van Halen was a match made in tabloid heaven,
but things were not as picture-perfect as they may have seemed. Bertinelli had trouble keeping
up with her husband's rocker lifestyle and the couple grew apart. Bertinelli told Oprah:
"He had his responsibilities of what he had to do, and I had my responsibilities.
And we thought if you just live in the same house there would be a connection, but no."
The distance led both Bertinelli and Van Halen to become unfaithful in their marriage. Still,
the couple, who had a son together, remained married for 20 years. It was with their son,
Wolfgang, in mind that they ultimately chose to divorce. Bertinelli told Oprah,
"One of the many reasons that Ed and I split up is to give Wolfie a better vision of what
two people who are supposedly in love treat each other like. Ed and I weren't treating
each other like two people that loved each other, and that's what Wolfie was seeing."
After divorcing in 2007, the couple remained close until Van Halen's death in 2020.
"And I miss him. And I'm allowed to miss him. You know, he was a huge part of my life."
Valerie Bertinelli once told Oprah:
"I have obsessed about my weight in some sort of way all my life.
I used to write in my journal what I weighed every day."
If body image was an issue for Bertinelli before starring on One Day at a Time,
appearing on television next to co-star Mackenzie Phillips
only made it significantly worse. Bertinelli told Oprah:
"She's always been thin, and I called my hips 'childbearing hips.' I felt like a
fat thing next to her. I look back and want to shake that little girl and say,
'Shut up. You're a beautiful young woman.' I thought I was ugly."
The actress started taking weight loss pills in order to shed some pounds. Although she stopped
after just a few months, it would prove to be the start of a lifelong battle with her weight. It all
came to a head when she used food to comfort her through her divorce. Bertinelli recalled to Oprah:
"Those were some of the darkest days of my life,
and I was eating my way through them. I became a hermit."
Bertinelli was driven into action after seeing herself on television,
and would soon lose nearly 50 pounds.
After making her weight battle public, Valerie Bertinelli got a call from diet
company Jenny Craig. Not only did they want her to use their program,
but they also offered Bertinelli a spokesperson job. So, in 2007, she went to work, both on her
diet and for Jenny Craig. Over the next two years, the actress dropped roughly 50 pounds.
She celebrated the accomplishment by posing in a bikini for the cover of People.
Bertinelli hadn't worn a bikini since she was 20. Bertinelli worked for Jenny
Craig for six years, but she now admits it's not something she's particularly proud of.
"If I must be honest it was freaking torture."
In the summer of 2021, Bertinelli shared a tearful response to being body-shamed.
In return, one commentator brought the former spokesperson's past into question, writing,
"You spent decades telling the rest of us to get thin,
shilled weight loss shakes, potions & snake oil & NOW wanna be a body shaming warrior?"
While pointing out she was simply venting and not claiming to be a victim,
Bertinelli acknowledged the error of her ways, writing on Twitter:
"Yes, I spent 6 years 'shilling' for Jenny Craig [...] I have been buying
into the diet industry my whole life and then I became part of the problem,
so here I am today receiving the karma of my actions."
Valerie Bertinelli has been working in front of the camera since she was a teenager and she's been
cooking for even longer. Those two qualities made the people at Food Network believe she would be a
perfect culinary host. So, in 2015, Bertinelli was asked to co-host Kids Baking Championship.
Later that year, she was given her own cooking show, Valerie's Home Cooking.
The series, which brings viewers into the kitchen with Bertinelli as she shares her
favorite family recipes, was never meant to be a full-time job. But things developed differently.
Bertinelli told The Philadelphia Inquirer:
"I was doing 'Hot in Cleveland,' and the cooking show was going to be a fun summer thing to do.
Then 'Hot in Cleveland' was canceled, and I still had my cooking show and it did very well."
Valerie's Home Cooking now has 12 seasons under its belt. Bertinelli credits the show's success,
in part, to her acting background, telling The Philadelphia Inquirer:
"Acting, now that I look back, was a setup for doing what I love. By cooking on camera,
it's a whole different animal than cooking at home. Years of training on camera made me
able to just cook on camera, and invite people into my kitchen."
While most of Bertinelli's life has been spent in the public eye,
there's been plenty going on behind the scenes. Fans got a better idea of her
roller coaster journey in 2008 when Bertinelli published her memoir Losing It. In the book,
she pulled back the curtain on some hidden parts of her life, including the struggles of
being a teenage celebrity and rock star wife. Losing It became a New York Times bestseller
and led Bertinelli to pen a follow-up the very next year. In Finding It she dove deeper into
her personal life, discussing everything from her maternal anxieties to her weight.
A few years later, Bertinelli turned back the clock even further and provided an
inside look into her childhood, or more specifically, the food she ate as a kid,
when she published her first cookbook. One Dish at a Time includes more than 100 Italian recipes.
Her second cookbook Valerie's Home Cooking, came out in 2017.
If you thought Valerie Bertinelli's career transition to professional television chef
and host meant she left Hollywood behind, you can think again. The television star is continuing to
add credits to her acting resume even now. After wrapping up a three-year stint on Touched by
an Angel in 2003, Bertinelli spent the rest of the decade starring in a few made-for-TV
movies and some short-lived series. In 2010, she landed her most prominent acting role
since she was a teenager, playing Melanie Moretti on Hot in Cleveland. The hit show,
which also starred Hollywood legend Betty White, put Bertinelli back in the limelight.
Hot in Cleveland ended its six-season run in 2015, just as Bertinelli's Food Network career
was taking off. But the television icon hasn't put acting completely on the back burner since
becoming a full-time professional foodie. In June of 2021, NBC announced that Bertinelli will star
alongside Demi Lovato in an upcoming comedy pilot titled Hungry. Bertinelli plays Lovato's
mother on the show, which chronicles a band of friends who are members of a food issues group.
Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus,
even more Mashed videos about your favorite TV chefs are coming soon.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.