Most celebrities are supposed to be famous for one thing, right? So David Bowie is a singer, Holly Willoughby is a TV presenter, and so on, and so forth. Not always. Bowie did some acting. Willoughby models some of her clothing range. And a lot of models decided that once they got bored with it, or too old, or were not as skinny as the new girls on the block, they would go into acting. You know the phrase “model actress whatever”.
Sophie was similar. She began to dip her toe into the world of movies, but later stepped back from it after stating she couldn’t act. Ask anybody if they know what films she was in, and they probably wouldn’t know. But they might know her as a TV chef. Sophie’s extra curricular activities culminated in 2010 with her own six part BBC cookery show. How did that happen?
Back in 2001, Sophie began work on a book. It was probably to be expected, given the Roald Dahl connection, but Sophie was also a keen reader and collector of first editions, so this was a perfect chance to fulfil an ambition. “The Man With The Dancing Eyes” was a relatively short Novella, a “fairytale for adults”, which featured illustrations by Annie Morris, just as Roald Dahl’s books had featured Quentin Blake illustrations. It was completed in the spring of 2002, and Bloomsbury picked the book up for publication in the UK. It appeared in early 2003, but it wasn’t quite the beginning of a full blown career change - at the time of it’s release, Sophie plugged the book by appearing on the cover of “Vogue”, and indeed, continued to carry on modelling in the years that followed.
But although it might have been easy to think of the book as a one off, it was actually the start of a sort of duel-career. A DKNY advertising campaign dubbed “New York Stories” featured Sophie as a writer, whilst Sophie had written - and continued to write - for newspapers and magazines, such as the “Sophie Dahl’s Stories” features that appeared in “The Guardian” in 2006 (they are reprinted on Sophie’s official site).
In 2007, she released her first “proper” full length novel, “Playing With the Grown Ups”, seen as something of an autobiographical tome, with the main character Kitty leading a nomadic existence that mirrored Sophie’s own childhood. As can happen with such things, the promo campaign for the book stretched into the Spring of 2008, as the book was released at later dates in overseas territories. As the promo campaign finally came to a halt, word soon began to filter through that Sophie had a follow up book already ready. But all was not what it seemed.
“Miss Dahl’s Voluptuous Delights” was a cookbook. Not a Novella, not a Novel, a Cookbook. Now signed to Harper Collins, the book was released in the late spring 2009. Why a cookbook? Well, it seems as though it existed on two levels - one, for fun, and two, as a two fingered salute to all the people who had moaned about her when she lost weight in the noughties, who assumed she was starving herself to get skinny. Sophie had always loved food, but the weight loss just happened, and this book was designed to be a celebration of cooking. Like the previous books, there was a link to her own family life, as the recipes included not just Sophie’s own, but those passed down to her from family members.
For every person who was ready to slay her for seemingly entering into a world that they thought she knew nothing about, there would be somebody else who loved the slightly decadent nature of the book, and it’s charming look and feel (“what a joy”, was Jamie Oliver’s quote). It does seem as though it garnered Sophie a new fan base, with wannabe cooks discovering her, and filling the internet with comments about how they had fallen in love with her.
Sophie’s full blown transition to pin up kitchen babe was completed in 2010. Soon after the book’s release, she was approached by the BBC with the view to doing her own TV show. She agreed, and filming commenced during the second half of 2009 - the shows were broadcast after she got married. “The Delicious Miss Dahl” has the same fey, sweet, and rather beautiful feel of the book, and although some detractors might have worried that it was all too middle class, it looked great - which was obviously the point. Each show was themed - shows were dedicated to “Nostalgia” or being “Selfish”, and the idea of each show was that, if you had an entire day to yourself, what you would prepare throughout that day to meet your mood.
Again, the usual suspects moaned about the show and tore it to shreds, but plenty of other people became totally obsessed with it, and with Sophie herself. She had successfully managed to make a total career transition, and she was not the only one. You may think the idea of going from modelling to writing to cookery is a strange career path, but in recent years, we have had Hollywood royalty like Gwyneth Paltrow doing her own cookbook, whilst ex-Brookside & Holby City actress Lisa Faulkner won “Celebrity Masterchef” and also began working on TV and in print within the cookery world thereafter, even claiming at one point that she had “retired from acting“. She even did some non-cookery TV presenting as well.
Sophie returned to the world of food in 2011, releasing a follow up book “From Season To Season” (working title: Sophie Dahl’s Guide To All Things Lovely) and a one off TV show about Mrs Beeton. The “Delicious” series later got a DVD release in Australia. But the duel career may still be there. Whilst Sophie continued to do the book festival rounds in 2012, the late summer saw her return to modelling with the Aubin & Wills campaign. It may even be a three pronged career, as there are plans for another novel as I type this. So what’s next (apart from a second baby)? Who knows? Model Cook Whatever indeed…
PS. More stills, and extra details about some the shows, can be found here: http://www.theswellelife.com/swelle_life/sophie-dahl/ whilst there is also a nice interview with Telegraph, circa 2010, here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/7421579/Sophie-Dahl-from-model-to-writer-to-television-cook.html
