December 30, 2024 • 36 mins
Everyone knows Sienna Miller—not just as an actress and a fashion designer, but also as a brave combatant who stood up against a powerful media empire. At The River Cafe, we know her as a fabulous eater. Always here with a big table, always with children, always sharing.
On this episode of Ruthie's Table 4, I’m here with Sienna for a conversation about food, family and bravery.
Ruthie's Table 4, made in partnership with Moncler.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You are listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Savannah Miller tells a story that when her sisters Sienna
was born, it was.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Like the lights came on.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Our guests on Ruthie's Table four people we all know
through the movies they make, the companies they run, the
policies and the values they are defined by. Here we
get to know them in a different way. How they
lay a table, what they feed their children, a recipe
they've kept from their grandmother. Everyone knows Sienna Miller is
an actress, of fashion designer, and a brave combatant who
(00:33):
stood up for her rights against a powerful media empire.
All of us in the River Cafe know her as
a fabulous eater, coming in on Sundays with her family,
always a big table, always involving children, always sitting in
the window. Most of all, it's about sharing. Most of all,
it's about fun. Just like Sienna. We're here today in
(00:55):
the River Cafe and the lights have come on. Oh ready,
So Sienna, would you like to read the recipe that
you chose to make for this podcast, which.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
Is pizza bianca with tiledio artichokes and time or as
Giermo del Tourre said on his thame, which I loved
from now I want to call it time. A pizza
bianca is a pizza without tomato, but if you want
to add something salty, you can add artichokes. Ingredients pizza dough,
double zero flour for dusting, olive oil for drizzling, two
(01:31):
artichokes baked and sliced, four hundred grams of toilggio sliced. Time,
preheat the oven to two hundred and thirty degrees centigrade.
Put a large baking sheet in the oven to heat up,
and roll your doble on a floured worktop as thinly
as possible. Place the pizza on a piece of baking paper.
Top with artichoke slices and to ledgio. Season with salt,
(01:54):
pepper and thyme. Drizzle with a little olive oil. Transfer
the baking paper with pizza on to the hot baking sheet.
Bake for six to eight minutes until the pizza is
puffed and golden.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
There what easy, Okay?
Speaker 4 (02:14):
So today the pizza on the menu is to led
you please, are straight out of the fridge. So if
you just want to try and get them from underneath first,
we would get a feel for it. And then I
put them on the tops and on my knuckles a
little bit, just widen it out. And then once it's
on your knuckles, you can just very genuinely stretch with
(02:36):
your thounds and your knuckles. But the most important thing
is that the middle doesn't stretch too much.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Yeah, so wreck.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
And then the secret is a rolling pin which actually.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
Has gone missing.
Speaker 4 (02:48):
We are to roll like around the middle parts. That's thinking, great, Okay,
then this is the this is the fun thing, because
I feel like you feel like a proper pizza chapherd.
So you grab the top, just it like very delicately,
and you gotta you gotta flip it onto your knuckles. Okay,
so just like that, just go for it. You've got
(03:10):
to go for it and for it. And then if
you use this pizza park and just lay it out
there and pull your fingers out from underneath, I got
a job. Yeah, I think you're looking bent in the mind.
And then we've got raw ars chokes. Yeah, and they
just soaping and lemon water so they don't use the color.
(03:30):
Then a nice little sprinkle of time, great, some black happer,
and then just a couple of olives again, not too many.
I think you should put in the other I agree.
So the ovens on about four hundred degrees. So just
with this again. You just want to move the paddle
like back and then you're done and the paper you're
going with it just yeah nice? Is it perfect? Real
(03:53):
good love, you'll bring it you.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Thanks.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
We were talking about making pizzas and what they involved,
but it's also involved with how you feed your kids,
and so I suppose we could talk about before feeding
your kids, how your parents fed you. What was the
food like in your household as a child.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
You have memories. I have so many memories.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
My mother is an amazing cook and really a lot
of her nurturing and her mother incomes through cooking and
always did. She was born in Yorkshire. She then moved
to South Africa when she was about four. My grandmother
was South African and she remarried a Jewish man converted
to Judaism, so mom kind of grew up with the
(04:42):
half Yorkshire, half Jewish South African cuisine around her. And
then when that husband died, my grandmother converted.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Back to the Church.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
So she was oh, she's not a grade Jew, No,
she was quite flimsy with it. But as a result
of that, there's Mum's got a lot of different styles
of cooking, and Sunday lunch was just a huge I
was born in New York to an American father, and
my sister was born in Hong Kong because they lived
in Hong Kong before, and then we moved to London
when I was about eighteen months.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
A lot of moving around, a lot of exactly. But
for you, you were in New York. I was in
New York, raised in London.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
I mean, I remember teething on Builtong, like she would
give us sticks of Builtong, and I don't really remember teething,
but I kind of do. Remember you're back that far,
running around like Bambam with just dried meat in every hand.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
And how old were you when you came back?
Speaker 3 (05:39):
People are grimacing, but I still love it. I was
eighteen months.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Old, Okay, So you are your childhood was British.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
My childhood was British but filled with different from people
from all over the world. So we'd have you know,
a brie, a South African barbecue in the summer on Sundays, and.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
It's called a brye.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
It's basically the Afrikaans word for a barbecue, I believe.
And we'd have burr horse and drew avorce, which is
different types of sausage.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
I know.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
Well, I grew up with this interesting yeah, and biboerti,
this South African dish and built onng everywhere, which is
the dried meat, which I still love.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
So there was your sister and yourself, my sister and
myself and your mother.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Were she did, she had, could cook, and she could
have a job.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
And yeah, well she was a yoga sort of yoga
Alexander technique exercise teacher. So I grew up in a
house with women lying all over the floors, I mean,
and my.
Speaker 5 (06:35):
Friends remember this, especially when I was a teenager.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
Her classes were so popular that they'd spill out of
the allocated room which was next to my bedroom, into
the hallways, down the stairs on another landing.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
It wasn't a big house, but this was your yoga lesson.
I don't know if I signed up for the yoga
lessons found myself on this serials.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
I know, well, she was so good at it, it
was She actually started the first exercise base school in
London in the seventies called Granny's beautiful bodies and it
was Alexander technique yoga ballet kind of hybrid and Ava
Gardner went and Albert.
Speaker 5 (07:07):
Finney and she was this really talented was it?
Speaker 3 (07:10):
It was in Knightsbridge.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Because there was a woman called Lordie Burke. Do you
remember her? Yes? She was to her that mum just
like it.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Yes, I went to Lordi Burke. I can't remember who
told me about when I first came to London. Yeah,
I think that was in probably nineteen seventy. Yes, and she.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
Looked totally out of cabaret. You know. Do you remember
so your mother worked with.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Her, Yes, they established it together. I don't really have
many memories of that. But when she started doing it
again after my parents got divorced, these people would flock
and there were just women with their legs in the
air outside the bedroom and I'd be hungover at the
hoodie on trying to get to the bathroom.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Just like you know, did she eat in a healthy way? Is?
And now she was concerned about yoga and Alexander. She's
never been weight conscious.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
She's never been conscious about calories or everything had butter
and cream and you know, and I think there is
something that's so incredible about being nourished by a meal
cooked with love, which is what you do here every
single time. You feel the love and the food and
it's like going home.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
It's an ingredient.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
It is a really strong ingredient. You can taste it
completely and tasted. Yeah, it is about sharing and about tasting.
So you with your mother working, did you still sit
down to a table every night and.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
After school, your sister and you and your mother?
Speaker 3 (08:31):
And I mean I went to boarding school at eight,
so then it was just weekends.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Yeah, I did.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
They got divorced when I was six, and then two
years later I went.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
To boarding school.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
And when you left the comfort of home and food
and as you say, the ingredient cooking with love, I
was going to boarding school. Did you feel that ingredient
was there and the food that you wed a boarding school?
Speaker 3 (08:51):
I mean it was a really My best friend is
in the room and she's laughing at me with a
pained expression. No, she didn't go to that school, the man, No,
not the first one. I mean, I was about as
high as this table. I was tiny, and it was
too young, you know, but apparently I really wanted to
go and it was this It was on paper, a
really idyllic looking place. It was a manor house. There
(09:12):
were only fifty two girls. But you know that first
night you're in a room with ten girls you've never met,
in kind of metal beds with tweed blankets over the top,
and its lights out at seven, and it's traumatic. It's
completely traumatic. Plus they used to feed us on Tuesday's spam,
which and you'd have to finish your plate, you'd have
(09:33):
to eat everything. I remember sort of sticking it in
my pockets and finding dried bits of spam in my pocket,
which was lovely.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
What are your other food memories of that school?
Speaker 3 (09:43):
Well, sometimes it was great, like big pots of lasagna,
and every day at four o'clock the baker would deliver
either ice buns or jam doughnuts, or there'd be some
kind of delivery, which was the highlight of the entire thing.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Then when you went home weekends, was it a big deal? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (10:02):
And Mum, you know, she'd make the most out of
nothing and it was filled with flavor and filled with love.
And then on Sundays all of her eccentric friends would
come around for a big boozy Sunday lunch and we'd
be made to sit at the table, however old or
young we were. And some of my most I think
formative moments were around that table because everyone's drinking, there's
(10:25):
opera blasting, there's no one censoring the conversation, and you
really learn how to kind of find your way in
the world through listening to adult conversation and eating food.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
And it was very joyous and jubilant. Did you ever
come back or did you stay? So it was every weekend,
Now what I mean for the rest of your education
that we were border.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
Yeah, so that was a weekly boarding. I was there
for two years. Then there was a fire or it
just closed down and I ended up going to senior
school a year early. So I was ten when I
went to senior school in seventeen. When I left, even
though I finished it, I was that was in Berkshire.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
And what was that like? And that was by that
point I was a season border. I was.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
I was again, you know, about three feet tall, but
really confident. Really, I'd completely detached from the notion of homesickness.
I'd gone through it in a really intense way, so
I was I was quite strong by that point and
up for it. And my big sister was at the
same school, which I'm sure helped, and it was school food,
but I loved I still dream about this chewy toast that.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
They have in the mornings.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
They'd had one of those things where you put the
bread in and it's cheap bread and it rotates through
and sort of half toasts, but obviously it's cooked a
while ago and it becomes kind of bready and chewy.
And we used to I used to make a butter
and marmite mix with the cold butter that was thick,
and spread it on and bend it over.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
And I still everyone's laughing. I'm a real pig. Now.
It's just because you mix it with the butter. First
I thought you can free. Yeah, it goes.
Speaker 5 (11:58):
I scrambled my eggs with the dollop of it in.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
They go kind of prey. But it's delicious. Botherel I'm
a huge.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Bother, which is you know, I say I've said it before,
and this because other people praised marmite that when I
first came to London, I went to a photography school.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
And we had to do a series.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
And I thought, what I'd like to do is get
a bunch of Americans and give them marmite and butter
and take a photograph of their face when they tasted it.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Because for an American it was just like what are
these people? What is yeast spread?
Speaker 2 (12:30):
And then I never quite got over it because Richard
used to said marmite in.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
Bed, but the breath, the marmite breath is specific. They
actually did genius advertising. They did you either love it
or hate it? I remember this advert where it was
like a girl and a boy and they were on
a date and it was going really well. And he
comes back to hers and she says, you know, do
you want some coffee?
Speaker 1 (12:52):
And there's a there's an old.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
Piece of toast with marmite on it in the kitchen
making the coffee. She just takes a bite of the
thing and goes back in and there and then they
start kissing and he goes and it said mom, like,
you either love it or you hate it?
Speaker 1 (13:05):
You have to lean it.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
I think, raw, I wouldn't want to eat it out
of its jar, go reel, I could, I could?
Speaker 1 (13:11):
I know this is really sounds stupid. What's the difference
is beef spread? Okay, we're really both baric. It's the
you as we have many years.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
I've lived here how long fifty years?
Speaker 3 (13:24):
Fifty years used to be, so I put it in
all sorts of cooking. I sneak it in.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
It's even worse. You still use it, I do.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Yeah, I'll put it in gravy, a little bit of
marmite and a bolonnaise.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
You love it. You know that day we head for lunch. Yeah,
you're canceled.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
You've got to wash your hair that night.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Right, something really good? Do I want to watch?
Speaker 5 (13:46):
Do you have a favorite a favorite meal?
Speaker 1 (13:49):
What's your curious? My favorite meal? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (13:55):
I think there is a kind of meal that I
like very much, which is based on having pasta first,
so it's always tomato pasta, and then having vegetables cooked
in different ways. So I'll have arti chokes that are
slow roasted, and then I'll have spinaches that just blant
with olive oil and their tomatoes. Will put them in
(14:15):
the oven and get them that there's absolutely not one
drop of liquid in them, and they've kind of almost
stuck to the pan.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
I like eating that way.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
I'm much less in my old age, less interested in
the first course, second course, third course, that formality of it.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
So it kind of breaks some of.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
The rules when you think, what are we having after
the pasta or maybe nothing, you know, but we are,
and then you bring out all being so it's quite
It's a way that I'm quite liked.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Did your parents take you to restaurants? Yeah, they did,
they did. They took us. We had a local Italian
called to Checo. We go there.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
I go to Johnny Rockets with my dad and have
a foot long hot dog and a coke float Rockets.
Speaker 5 (14:54):
There are I don't know, I don't know coke floats.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
I love the idea of and but they're I always
found them kind of disgusting, but I get it just
because it was I was trying to connect to his
American side. And then we go to fancier places as well.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
And when you became a kind of more independent person
on your own, well, you always say that you were
in New York and you were you were taking care
of your friends, and you were the person that people
went to for Sunday lunch or you still did that.
But when you're when you were acting and when you're
working on a film, what is it like when you're
when you're working and when you are he's in theater
or in film and you're trying to work, and do
(15:31):
you have a special routine for eating.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
No, it all probably gets a bit goes a bit
wrong in those moments. I mean, well, I'm never I'm
not someone who's going to cook for themselves. I think
so much of the joy of it is feeding other people.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
So I will end up.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
I'm a place well, just remote, like Shreveport, Louisiana. We
lived on the side of the road in a holiday
in or something.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
What were you filming?
Speaker 3 (15:58):
I was filming a movie about Decgate called Factory Girl,
and we were all in a Marriotte residence in on
the side of the freeway in Boje City, which is
outside of Louisiana. You know, Shreveport. Jimmy Fallon was in
that movie. Guy Pierce all these Tara Summers was in it.
Jack Houston, who's just directed a movie that's apparently amazing.
(16:18):
And I would cook in this tiny like you would.
Still I would still cook. I would still find a
way to cook.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
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Speaker 1 (16:34):
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Speaker 2 (16:35):
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Speaker 1 (16:58):
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Speaker 2 (17:00):
Up the River Cafe dot co dot uk or call
me on seven. Sorry, okay, thanks your experience that you
had as a person who was you know, doing their work,
raising their children, having your privacy, doing no harm, breaking
(17:22):
no rules. Had something horrible happened to her and we
could bring it back to the food. I could say,
what do you eat when a when a newspaper empire
goes for you and tries to destroy you and goes.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
Into your phone? Did that? Did you feel hungry? Or
did you get up eating?
Speaker 2 (17:38):
But it is part of our conversation life and food
and fairness, and I wondered if you could say how
you felt when you woke up in the morning and knew.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
Did you have breakfast or did you did real stress?
I lose my appetite, you lose it.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
Yeah, it's interesting and I'm and I'm such a I
love to eat more than anything. It's kind of it's
where I get a huge amount of pleasure, but I, yeah,
I lose my appetite if I'm under immense stress. So
well was his life well, the paparazzi attention at a
very young age was probably the most traumatizing and surreal
because it happened from one day to the next. Ild
(18:18):
I was twenty one and I'd fallen in love with
my co star of my first film, and he was very.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
Famous, and there were pictures of us.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
We'd gone to the National Portrait Gallery or something, the
Tate Modern, I can't remember. And I remember leaving his
house the following day and getting in a black taxi
and the cave.
Speaker 5 (18:38):
Saying have you seen the news of the world today?
And I was like, what, you know?
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Twenty one?
Speaker 5 (18:42):
And he said have you seen the news of the world
And I said no, and he said, you're.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
All over it, and he threw a copy of the
newspaper in the back of the cab and there we
were on the front. It was so it was honestly
like normal life to absolute surreal, you know, life after
that and I got home to my flat and there
were photographers all outside my flat and that was it.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
That was it.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
It was gloves off at that moment in culture where
the tabloids had all the power and young women were
really persecuted and men.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
But it was really crazy.
Speaker 5 (19:13):
And at first it was kind of funny. I felt
like Lara Croft.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
Or in some virtual experience, and my friends we'd like
run away and try and hide, and it was giggly.
But it became very quickly very insidious, because it was
threatening and aggressive, and it really took over my entire identity.
I felt like was being written and read by people.
(19:38):
But I felt so out of control in a really
formative moment. And this all happened before that film had
come out, or any film would come out. I was
at the very beginning of my career, and I do
look back and wonder how different things would have been
if I had been known as an actor first. It
was a lot of a battle to kind of establish
(19:59):
myself and be taken seriously and not seen as someone
who wore ice clothes or had a famous boyfriend or
It was a battle, and I think I definitely ate
through it.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
I'm sure at.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
That time, but it was. And then of course the
phone hacking. I knew that was going on at the time.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
It was very.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
Difficult because it would be well, it would be impossible
for them to know half of what they knew without
some form of eavesdropping. And I think there were bugs
put in houses and in cars, and trackers on cars
and all sorts of it was and you feel like
you're going mad. But clicks on the line of my
mother's landline. So it was relieving in a way to
(20:40):
know that I hadn't gone mad when I found out.
But to find out was really difficult. I had to
take the met Police to court to get the evidence
that they had in order to take the news of
the world to court, and they wanted twenty one days
to hand it over the evidence that they had, and
the judge said, hand it over today in these four
huge boxes with emails and phone numbers and numbers of
(21:02):
my friends and anyway, in the end, I didn't settle
out of court. I took them to court, which meant
I got far less money than I would have done
had I been quiet. But actually it's one of the
proudest things that I did. And now some of the
friends whose numbers they also had, got some money too,
so it kind of feels like that's a lovely that's
(21:24):
a lovely ending.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
To a saga.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Yeah, I was so comfort you could find in those
days into cooking or to.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
The cooking was always a grounding.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
I mean, it was a decade really of harassment, but
as much as possible, it's okay because it sucks in retrospect,
but it also is a huge part of who.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
I am and why I am.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
The way that I am and what matters to me
is very clear, and what doesn't matter and what's out
of your control is also very clear. And I think
I tried to control it for a long time and
then gave up. And I know my friends, my family,
the people I love, the restaurants I love, the food
I love. The community around me is sacred and respected,
and the rest I don't care. I feel like everyone
(22:11):
in the world see my you know, dirty underwear. It's
like there's nothing more I can. Everyone knows everything, whatever
it's But I know the power.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Yeah, that's you're saying that gives you if you have
been killed, you know there are people who have been destroyed.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
Well, no, I'm proud that I didn't go that far,
but I understand absolutely why you lose your mind. It
kind of perpetuates behavior that coping mechanisms that are toxic,
drinking too much or going out too much, or just
keeping moving, because it's also crazy and you can see
why people unravel, and actually it suits them. The more
(22:46):
you unravel, they're kind of encouraging you to do that
because that sells mere papers.
Speaker 5 (22:50):
Now, So it's it's wonderful in a way.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
I'm not a fan of social media, but I respect
that women now have an opportunity to that their voice
is powerful, that anything anyone could write, or they have
a means to retaliate. I just got incredibly litigious, and
then you'd get an apology that's that big, tiny in
a newspaper that anyone to use. I mean, it's nice
that it's come full circle and we look back on
(23:14):
that behavior and can't believe that that was allowed. It
feels like another person, another world, another life.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
Do you remember the people who helped you through this?
Speaker 3 (23:23):
Yeah, I've been fortunate. I've never had a friend seller
story in my life. I had a very strong core
group of friends from a young age, from ten from
my senior school, one of whom is in this room
right now, my first and oldest friend.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
Do you remember going through this, Yeah, very much. So, yeah,
running away from.
Speaker 5 (23:42):
She's six foot tall and im and I'm not.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
She was my security. But also she was sometimes a decoy,
so we'd put like a jump a jacket over her
head and she'd run out of the theater. I was
doing a play, even though I'd suddenly grown six you know,
however many inches.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
They didn't really notice.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
It's such chaos, but but player doing My first way
was as you like it, the windoms, Yeah, but I think, yeah,
having that stability in my family, my mother, my sister,
it kept it kept me anchored in a way where
I feel like if I didn't have that, I understand
how people derail completely.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
If you like listening to Ruthie's Table for would you
please make sure to rate and review the podcast on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Thank you. What did you do during COVID for food?
It was interesting.
Speaker 3 (24:43):
All I did in COVID was cook We were Where
were you?
Speaker 1 (24:46):
Upstate New York? Were in North Salem?
Speaker 2 (24:49):
Yeah, I'm from you know, I'm from right, which is
a bit further, Ye, a bit further.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
Of course, you are Woodstock, so you could take the
girl out of stuff you made.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
That makes so much sense. I wasn't really like that.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
Did you go to the festival? No, I had my
tonsils out. I know my parents would let me go.
I was having They scheduled that, well, nobody knew it
was gonna be there, and I mean that could be
like that. Also, it was an inwood stock because at
the last minute, the town fathers or whatever, we had
to do it on that guy's farm. Yeah, but I
was kind of like slightly nerdy about studying. I was
(25:28):
surrounded by people doing everything wild and I was a
girl who did her homework for a while. And we
were in My friend Libby and I had a test.
So we went to the local cafe and we were
sitting there studying and Bob Dylan sent a note. We
saw him and it was just when he was kind
of starting out, but he was already famous, and he
sent us a note saying, would you like to come
(25:48):
come back to my house and watch the band rehearse?
Speaker 1 (25:51):
And we sent back a note saying, no, we have
a test tomorrow. Oh my god. So there you go. WOWE,
Well maybe it's better. Probably failed it. I don't know,
but I don't.
Speaker 3 (26:03):
Wonder if i'd gone back, Yeah, I think gone to
I would have definitely.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
I know you know that song you'd never regret rim Well,
there you go.
Speaker 3 (26:15):
Maybe that's when I would have actually instigated you were
a better woman than I are. There's still time, maybe
I should get to make it really nice.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
You remember fifty years ago when you invited that one's ready?
Speaker 1 (26:31):
Ready?
Speaker 2 (26:32):
Now I've decided, yeah, you could come back.
Speaker 3 (26:36):
Prize winning poet quite rightly, So yeah, I completely agree.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
He totally deserved it.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
So you filmed in Venice and your Venice Shreveport.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
I filmed in so many places all over the world.
In Venice, I lived by the fish market.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
What was that like?
Speaker 3 (26:54):
Well, just the produce that you get, and I became
friends with all the stall kind of the people proprietors
at the stool, and the quality of tomatoes.
Speaker 5 (27:03):
That's the thing I really lament about living in England.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
But what month were you there?
Speaker 3 (27:07):
I was there from July June till November. So from
the most kind of glorious boiling hot to it being
really moody and foggy, but watching the transition of the
seasons through the produce of the food and the fish
market was just stunning.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
I don't cook enough fish. I need to get better
at that. Okay, we can work on that. Yeah, that's easy.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
We just talk about going to a city, going to
a town, and going to a market. It tells you
where you are the way the Venetians might shout and
towards Bologna they might just put everything out wait for
you to come to them. And then probably in Naples,
the arrival of the produce, and it does there is
a dynamic, do you.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
Think, absolutely?
Speaker 3 (27:51):
And then markets in France very intimidating for me. I
feel like as an english person trying to navigate a
French market is just it's just intimidating. There is a
superiority and often rightly so with the French cooking and
the French produce, and sometimes it's it's charming. And I
love the I love places in Provence and outside. I
(28:11):
love going to a market is my favorite pastime.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
Do you find out if there are markets before you
go there?
Speaker 5 (28:18):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (28:18):
Yeah, and the days of them. But the Italians are
just a little bit more gregarious.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
The French are a little bit more Have you ever
tried to touch a mallan in France?
Speaker 1 (28:28):
Did you get hit.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
That's the worst the disappointment prog all the French people
who are listening here. We really respect your food culture.
We think it's amazing. It is abas, it is incredible.
The way they will, you know, they really understand. But
it took me. I lived in Paris for six years
and it took me really a while to understand.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
You do not touch. Oh that's a really good touch.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
And maybe this is different but now but you know,
if you see a peach and you might want to
hold it for a minute, No, you don't. Do You
just trust that they're all perfect? And how do you
eat apart from cooking your own food? Do you when
you know you're filming all day, will you eat a breakfast?
Speaker 1 (29:10):
You say you don't eat a lot?
Speaker 3 (29:11):
No, I will if I'm not that early often filming
Europe at five or earlier. I'll be ravenous by the
time it's you know, breakfast time, and I will have
whatever they cook on set. I mean, I'm not too fussy,
I think because of the boarding school upbringing. If I
add enough salt to anything, I'll eat it. I don't
love awful. I wish I did, because I feel like
such a foodie, but I grew up loving steak and
(29:34):
kidney pie, and now I don't think. I don't think
I want too much awful.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
When you acted in Burnt, Yes you played. Tell us
about playing a chef.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
Well, I love cooking, as you know, and food, and
so the idea of playing a chef in a two
Michelin star or a kitchen that was going for Michelin
Stars was was incredible. We got trained by Marcus Wareing
and who's lovely, and I actually got to do I
did a service in his restaurant, The Barkley, which has
(30:05):
two Michelin Stars, and I was on the fish station.
He taught me how to fill it a turbot, which
is really difficult, and then I was on the I
was essentially on fish and we had a working kitchen
for the entire duration of that shoot, and Marcus was
on set, so every burner was on. You know, you
really were part of a troop of a tribe of
(30:25):
sort of chefs. And at the end of it, he
said to me, you're a cook, and you've got a place.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
In my kitchen.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
Ah, And I know, so I've got this backup plan
calling you Yeah, yeah, Well this is more my style
of cooking, but his is very He's good, he's amazing,
and it's but it's forensic.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Yeah, but that's good as a kind of starter as well,
that you start with it, you know, loading.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
Your lines exactly. And I went to the library with Brett.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
What did you do that?
Speaker 3 (30:53):
I kind of just sat in the kitchen for a
service and watched and the differences in people's kitchens. So
Marcus is very he's got a military background. It's incredibly christine,
it's incredibly ordered. Brett's is kind of chaotic. Yours is
like a family kitchen. You know, you so can tell
the personality of a chef by the way they run
their kitchen.
Speaker 6 (31:12):
Have you done improvisation the I've sort of I've been
made to in workshopping a play or playing around with
something on a set before you start filming.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
It's funny.
Speaker 5 (31:26):
I get quite intimidated by improvising.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
I did this film called American Woman that very few
people saw, but I was so proud of it. But
Christina Hendrix played my sister, and Jake Scott directed it,
whose father is Ridley Scott, the kind of legendary film
director family, and Jake wanted me and Christina to really
have that sisterly bond before we started shooting, and he
(31:51):
said to me, I want you guys to go upstairs.
It was the day we met and put makeup on
each other like you might have done as children.
Speaker 5 (31:56):
And we were just like, no, please, God, don't make
us do that.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
It will be so uncomfortable. You know.
Speaker 3 (32:02):
It's there's such a trust that comes with it, and
and comedians are amazing at it.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
I like to think of myself as really funny. But
for some reason, thanks.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
Realthing, you had to improvise with Larry David and Curby
Your Enthusiasm, one of my favorite programs of all time.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
What was it like?
Speaker 3 (32:17):
Well, I kind of accosted Larry David in the way
I might Bob Dylan at the Vanity Fair party in Hollywood,
which sounds so glamorous and it is unless you're me
and you drink too many martiniz and sort.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
Of over excited.
Speaker 3 (32:29):
And there was Larry David by the bar, and Ollie,
my boyfriend introduced me really to Cub's. He's sort of
Larry in training. I think he will end up that way.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
It could be worse. I always say that Larry really
never does anything wrong.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
He does the greatest humoring. Yehs just you know, he
gets into trouble and he'd probably get you. But he's
actually essentially such a good person.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
He's a great with a huge heart.
Speaker 3 (32:54):
And I think I was obviously so enthusiastically kind of
pouring my praise on him that it got the cogs turning.
And about six months later he was like, I had
this idea for Curb and basically you're hitting on me
and I.
Speaker 5 (33:09):
So obviously I was flirtatious, but Ollie was there.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
I wasn't deliberately anyway.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
I then you get a skeleton script. It looks a
little bit like this recipe, and it's sort of like
Siena is converting to guodaism, sees Larry at the at
the temple and comes up and talks to him.
Speaker 5 (33:28):
So you get an idea of where the scene has
to go.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
But you're improvising with one of the great if not
the greatest.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
Ill if you were improvising, you did so well well.
Speaker 5 (33:36):
It was terrifying. I was not comfortable.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
Yeah, but he's wonderful because he finds the whole thing
incredibly funny.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
The last question I will ask you is that describe
times in your life or days in your life, or
maybe places in your life where you had food And
you actually asked me that question. When it becomes food
becomes something that is not just to alleviate hunger or
to share with your children or to experience together or
to relax with with quickly, but it loss can be comfort.
(34:09):
Is there something that you would go to in your
whole life?
Speaker 3 (34:12):
There are several things, but I'm an enormous spaghetti bolonnes
guy and Tory who's.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
In this room.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
We do lots of work with the International Medical Corps,
which is an NGO, and as a result of that,
we've traveled all over the world to really remote places.
Northern Nigeria in a kind of Boko Haram region and
it's dangerous, Congo and Haiti and all sorts of places,
but you can often find a bolonnaise.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
Bizarrely, and one of the.
Speaker 3 (34:39):
Best spaghetti bolonneses we ever had, we were going to
do a bolonnes tour of the world because we are
obsessed with it. I think it's so delicious was in
northern Nigeria in this tiny, very weird hotel. It was amazing,
wasn't it. You didn't order it the first night, and
then we both ordered it. I had it twice in
our own You had it the second night.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
It was that good. Well do you know what made it? So?
Speaker 2 (35:00):
Do?
Speaker 3 (35:00):
I don't, And I'm quite a cheap date. But I
think it was beef. But I think anything would have been.
You know, something familiar in that in that environment is
but I love a bolonnaise. I love chicken soup if
I'm sick. I guess that's the Jewish influence.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
I love curry. You know. Do we just talk about
the NGA? Yes, tell us about.
Speaker 3 (35:23):
Well, in twenty ten, I became an ambassador for this
NGO called the International Medical Core.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
So they basically provide healthcare for displaced people all around
the world.
Speaker 3 (35:34):
And I visit their programs and they it's water, sanitation, inoculations, feeding,
and you get assigned different departments to kind of run.
But they their ethos is really holistic in that they
don't just go in and administer or band aid and
provide this service and then leave. They train locals to
become able to run the program, so it's becomes ultimately
(35:56):
self sufficient. And it's an extraordinary experience to visit these
places and meet these survivors of all sorts of terrible famine.
You know, in the Congo it was rape was a
method of war and incredibly harrowing places to visit and
experience is to have. But they're an incredible organization and
(36:18):
I think ninety eight point six percent of every dollar
goes straight to the field.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
Are you still working with them?
Speaker 5 (36:24):
Yeah, I am, I am. I haven't done a trip
for a while.
Speaker 3 (36:28):
The last one was quite intense and dangerous in Nigeria,
and I then got pregnant and then COVID. You know,
I need to do another one.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
But you can always do more.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
Thank you, sir, Thanks for one time, what a great play.
Speaker 3 (36:47):
Thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership
with Montclair
You are listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Savannah Miller tells a story that when her sisters Sienna
was born, it was.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Like the lights came on.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Our guests on Ruthie's Table four people we all know
through the movies they make, the companies they run, the
policies and the values they are defined by. Here we
get to know them in a different way. How they
lay a table, what they feed their children, a recipe
they've kept from their grandmother. Everyone knows Sienna Miller is
an actress, of fashion designer, and a brave combatant who
(00:33):
stood up for her rights against a powerful media empire.
All of us in the River Cafe know her as
a fabulous eater, coming in on Sundays with her family,
always a big table, always involving children, always sitting in
the window. Most of all, it's about sharing. Most of all,
it's about fun. Just like Sienna. We're here today in
(00:55):
the River Cafe and the lights have come on. Oh ready,
So Sienna, would you like to read the recipe that
you chose to make for this podcast, which.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
Is pizza bianca with tiledio artichokes and time or as
Giermo del Tourre said on his thame, which I loved
from now I want to call it time. A pizza
bianca is a pizza without tomato, but if you want
to add something salty, you can add artichokes. Ingredients pizza dough,
double zero flour for dusting, olive oil for drizzling, two
(01:31):
artichokes baked and sliced, four hundred grams of toilggio sliced. Time,
preheat the oven to two hundred and thirty degrees centigrade.
Put a large baking sheet in the oven to heat up,
and roll your doble on a floured worktop as thinly
as possible. Place the pizza on a piece of baking paper.
Top with artichoke slices and to ledgio. Season with salt,
(01:54):
pepper and thyme. Drizzle with a little olive oil. Transfer
the baking paper with pizza on to the hot baking sheet.
Bake for six to eight minutes until the pizza is
puffed and golden.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
There what easy, Okay?
Speaker 4 (02:14):
So today the pizza on the menu is to led
you please, are straight out of the fridge. So if
you just want to try and get them from underneath first,
we would get a feel for it. And then I
put them on the tops and on my knuckles a
little bit, just widen it out. And then once it's
on your knuckles, you can just very genuinely stretch with
(02:36):
your thounds and your knuckles. But the most important thing
is that the middle doesn't stretch too much.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Yeah, so wreck.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
And then the secret is a rolling pin which actually.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
Has gone missing.
Speaker 4 (02:48):
We are to roll like around the middle parts. That's thinking, great, Okay,
then this is the this is the fun thing, because
I feel like you feel like a proper pizza chapherd.
So you grab the top, just it like very delicately,
and you gotta you gotta flip it onto your knuckles. Okay,
so just like that, just go for it. You've got
(03:10):
to go for it and for it. And then if
you use this pizza park and just lay it out
there and pull your fingers out from underneath, I got
a job. Yeah, I think you're looking bent in the mind.
And then we've got raw ars chokes. Yeah, and they
just soaping and lemon water so they don't use the color.
(03:30):
Then a nice little sprinkle of time, great, some black happer,
and then just a couple of olives again, not too many.
I think you should put in the other I agree.
So the ovens on about four hundred degrees. So just
with this again. You just want to move the paddle
like back and then you're done and the paper you're
going with it just yeah nice? Is it perfect? Real
(03:53):
good love, you'll bring it you.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Thanks.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
We were talking about making pizzas and what they involved,
but it's also involved with how you feed your kids,
and so I suppose we could talk about before feeding
your kids, how your parents fed you. What was the
food like in your household as a child.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
You have memories. I have so many memories.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
My mother is an amazing cook and really a lot
of her nurturing and her mother incomes through cooking and
always did. She was born in Yorkshire. She then moved
to South Africa when she was about four. My grandmother
was South African and she remarried a Jewish man converted
to Judaism, so mom kind of grew up with the
(04:42):
half Yorkshire, half Jewish South African cuisine around her. And
then when that husband died, my grandmother converted.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Back to the Church.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
So she was oh, she's not a grade Jew, No,
she was quite flimsy with it. But as a result
of that, there's Mum's got a lot of different styles
of cooking, and Sunday lunch was just a huge I
was born in New York to an American father, and
my sister was born in Hong Kong because they lived
in Hong Kong before, and then we moved to London
when I was about eighteen months.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
A lot of moving around, a lot of exactly. But
for you, you were in New York. I was in
New York, raised in London.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
I mean, I remember teething on Builtong, like she would
give us sticks of Builtong, and I don't really remember teething,
but I kind of do. Remember you're back that far,
running around like Bambam with just dried meat in every hand.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
And how old were you when you came back?
Speaker 3 (05:39):
People are grimacing, but I still love it. I was
eighteen months.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Old, Okay, So you are your childhood was British.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
My childhood was British but filled with different from people
from all over the world. So we'd have you know,
a brie, a South African barbecue in the summer on Sundays, and.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
It's called a brye.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
It's basically the Afrikaans word for a barbecue, I believe.
And we'd have burr horse and drew avorce, which is
different types of sausage.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
I know.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
Well, I grew up with this interesting yeah, and biboerti,
this South African dish and built onng everywhere, which is
the dried meat, which I still love.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
So there was your sister and yourself, my sister and
myself and your mother.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Were she did, she had, could cook, and she could
have a job.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
And yeah, well she was a yoga sort of yoga
Alexander technique exercise teacher. So I grew up in a
house with women lying all over the floors, I mean,
and my.
Speaker 5 (06:35):
Friends remember this, especially when I was a teenager.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
Her classes were so popular that they'd spill out of
the allocated room which was next to my bedroom, into
the hallways, down the stairs on another landing.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
It wasn't a big house, but this was your yoga lesson.
I don't know if I signed up for the yoga
lessons found myself on this serials.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
I know, well, she was so good at it, it
was She actually started the first exercise base school in
London in the seventies called Granny's beautiful bodies and it
was Alexander technique yoga ballet kind of hybrid and Ava
Gardner went and Albert.
Speaker 5 (07:07):
Finney and she was this really talented was it?
Speaker 3 (07:10):
It was in Knightsbridge.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Because there was a woman called Lordie Burke. Do you
remember her? Yes? She was to her that mum just
like it.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Yes, I went to Lordi Burke. I can't remember who
told me about when I first came to London. Yeah,
I think that was in probably nineteen seventy. Yes, and she.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
Looked totally out of cabaret. You know. Do you remember
so your mother worked with.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Her, Yes, they established it together. I don't really have
many memories of that. But when she started doing it
again after my parents got divorced, these people would flock
and there were just women with their legs in the
air outside the bedroom and I'd be hungover at the
hoodie on trying to get to the bathroom.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Just like you know, did she eat in a healthy way? Is?
And now she was concerned about yoga and Alexander. She's
never been weight conscious.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
She's never been conscious about calories or everything had butter
and cream and you know, and I think there is
something that's so incredible about being nourished by a meal
cooked with love, which is what you do here every
single time. You feel the love and the food and
it's like going home.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
It's an ingredient.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
It is a really strong ingredient. You can taste it
completely and tasted. Yeah, it is about sharing and about tasting.
So you with your mother working, did you still sit
down to a table every night and.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
After school, your sister and you and your mother?
Speaker 3 (08:31):
And I mean I went to boarding school at eight,
so then it was just weekends.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Yeah, I did.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
They got divorced when I was six, and then two
years later I went.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
To boarding school.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
And when you left the comfort of home and food
and as you say, the ingredient cooking with love, I
was going to boarding school. Did you feel that ingredient
was there and the food that you wed a boarding school?
Speaker 3 (08:51):
I mean it was a really My best friend is
in the room and she's laughing at me with a
pained expression. No, she didn't go to that school, the man, No,
not the first one. I mean, I was about as
high as this table. I was tiny, and it was
too young, you know, but apparently I really wanted to
go and it was this It was on paper, a
really idyllic looking place. It was a manor house. There
(09:12):
were only fifty two girls. But you know that first
night you're in a room with ten girls you've never met,
in kind of metal beds with tweed blankets over the top,
and its lights out at seven, and it's traumatic. It's
completely traumatic. Plus they used to feed us on Tuesday's spam,
which and you'd have to finish your plate, you'd have
(09:33):
to eat everything. I remember sort of sticking it in
my pockets and finding dried bits of spam in my pocket,
which was lovely.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
What are your other food memories of that school?
Speaker 3 (09:43):
Well, sometimes it was great, like big pots of lasagna,
and every day at four o'clock the baker would deliver
either ice buns or jam doughnuts, or there'd be some
kind of delivery, which was the highlight of the entire thing.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Then when you went home weekends, was it a big deal? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (10:02):
And Mum, you know, she'd make the most out of
nothing and it was filled with flavor and filled with love.
And then on Sundays all of her eccentric friends would
come around for a big boozy Sunday lunch and we'd
be made to sit at the table, however old or
young we were. And some of my most I think
formative moments were around that table because everyone's drinking, there's
(10:25):
opera blasting, there's no one censoring the conversation, and you
really learn how to kind of find your way in
the world through listening to adult conversation and eating food.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
And it was very joyous and jubilant. Did you ever
come back or did you stay? So it was every weekend,
Now what I mean for the rest of your education
that we were border.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
Yeah, so that was a weekly boarding. I was there
for two years. Then there was a fire or it
just closed down and I ended up going to senior
school a year early. So I was ten when I
went to senior school in seventeen. When I left, even
though I finished it, I was that was in Berkshire.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
And what was that like? And that was by that
point I was a season border. I was.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
I was again, you know, about three feet tall, but
really confident. Really, I'd completely detached from the notion of homesickness.
I'd gone through it in a really intense way, so
I was I was quite strong by that point and
up for it. And my big sister was at the
same school, which I'm sure helped, and it was school food,
but I loved I still dream about this chewy toast that.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
They have in the mornings.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
They'd had one of those things where you put the
bread in and it's cheap bread and it rotates through
and sort of half toasts, but obviously it's cooked a
while ago and it becomes kind of bready and chewy.
And we used to I used to make a butter
and marmite mix with the cold butter that was thick,
and spread it on and bend it over.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
And I still everyone's laughing. I'm a real pig. Now.
It's just because you mix it with the butter. First
I thought you can free. Yeah, it goes.
Speaker 5 (11:58):
I scrambled my eggs with the dollop of it in.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
They go kind of prey. But it's delicious. Botherel I'm
a huge.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Bother, which is you know, I say I've said it before,
and this because other people praised marmite that when I
first came to London, I went to a photography school.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
And we had to do a series.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
And I thought, what I'd like to do is get
a bunch of Americans and give them marmite and butter
and take a photograph of their face when they tasted it.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Because for an American it was just like what are
these people? What is yeast spread?
Speaker 2 (12:30):
And then I never quite got over it because Richard
used to said marmite in.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
Bed, but the breath, the marmite breath is specific. They
actually did genius advertising. They did you either love it
or hate it? I remember this advert where it was
like a girl and a boy and they were on
a date and it was going really well. And he
comes back to hers and she says, you know, do
you want some coffee?
Speaker 1 (12:52):
And there's a there's an old.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
Piece of toast with marmite on it in the kitchen
making the coffee. She just takes a bite of the
thing and goes back in and there and then they
start kissing and he goes and it said mom, like,
you either love it or you hate it?
Speaker 1 (13:05):
You have to lean it.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
I think, raw, I wouldn't want to eat it out
of its jar, go reel, I could, I could?
Speaker 1 (13:11):
I know this is really sounds stupid. What's the difference
is beef spread? Okay, we're really both baric. It's the
you as we have many years.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
I've lived here how long fifty years?
Speaker 3 (13:24):
Fifty years used to be, so I put it in
all sorts of cooking. I sneak it in.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
It's even worse. You still use it, I do.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Yeah, I'll put it in gravy, a little bit of
marmite and a bolonnaise.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
You love it. You know that day we head for lunch. Yeah,
you're canceled.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
You've got to wash your hair that night.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Right, something really good? Do I want to watch?
Speaker 5 (13:46):
Do you have a favorite a favorite meal?
Speaker 1 (13:49):
What's your curious? My favorite meal? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (13:55):
I think there is a kind of meal that I
like very much, which is based on having pasta first,
so it's always tomato pasta, and then having vegetables cooked
in different ways. So I'll have arti chokes that are
slow roasted, and then I'll have spinaches that just blant
with olive oil and their tomatoes. Will put them in
(14:15):
the oven and get them that there's absolutely not one
drop of liquid in them, and they've kind of almost
stuck to the pan.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
I like eating that way.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
I'm much less in my old age, less interested in
the first course, second course, third course, that formality of it.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
So it kind of breaks some of.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
The rules when you think, what are we having after
the pasta or maybe nothing, you know, but we are,
and then you bring out all being so it's quite
It's a way that I'm quite liked.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Did your parents take you to restaurants? Yeah, they did,
they did. They took us. We had a local Italian
called to Checo. We go there.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
I go to Johnny Rockets with my dad and have
a foot long hot dog and a coke float Rockets.
Speaker 5 (14:54):
There are I don't know, I don't know coke floats.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
I love the idea of and but they're I always
found them kind of disgusting, but I get it just
because it was I was trying to connect to his
American side. And then we go to fancier places as well.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
And when you became a kind of more independent person
on your own, well, you always say that you were
in New York and you were you were taking care
of your friends, and you were the person that people
went to for Sunday lunch or you still did that.
But when you're when you were acting and when you're
working on a film, what is it like when you're
when you're working and when you are he's in theater
or in film and you're trying to work, and do
(15:31):
you have a special routine for eating.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
No, it all probably gets a bit goes a bit
wrong in those moments. I mean, well, I'm never I'm
not someone who's going to cook for themselves. I think
so much of the joy of it is feeding other people.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
So I will end up.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
I'm a place well, just remote, like Shreveport, Louisiana. We
lived on the side of the road in a holiday
in or something.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
What were you filming?
Speaker 3 (15:58):
I was filming a movie about Decgate called Factory Girl,
and we were all in a Marriotte residence in on
the side of the freeway in Boje City, which is
outside of Louisiana. You know, Shreveport. Jimmy Fallon was in
that movie. Guy Pierce all these Tara Summers was in it.
Jack Houston, who's just directed a movie that's apparently amazing.
(16:18):
And I would cook in this tiny like you would.
Still I would still cook. I would still find a
way to cook.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
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Speaker 1 (16:34):
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Speaker 2 (16:35):
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Speaker 1 (16:58):
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Speaker 2 (17:00):
Up the River Cafe dot co dot uk or call
me on seven. Sorry, okay, thanks your experience that you
had as a person who was you know, doing their work,
raising their children, having your privacy, doing no harm, breaking
(17:22):
no rules. Had something horrible happened to her and we
could bring it back to the food. I could say,
what do you eat when a when a newspaper empire
goes for you and tries to destroy you and goes.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
Into your phone? Did that? Did you feel hungry? Or
did you get up eating?
Speaker 2 (17:38):
But it is part of our conversation life and food
and fairness, and I wondered if you could say how
you felt when you woke up in the morning and knew.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
Did you have breakfast or did you did real stress?
I lose my appetite, you lose it.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
Yeah, it's interesting and I'm and I'm such a I
love to eat more than anything. It's kind of it's
where I get a huge amount of pleasure, but I, yeah,
I lose my appetite if I'm under immense stress. So
well was his life well, the paparazzi attention at a
very young age was probably the most traumatizing and surreal
because it happened from one day to the next. Ild
(18:18):
I was twenty one and I'd fallen in love with
my co star of my first film, and he was very.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
Famous, and there were pictures of us.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
We'd gone to the National Portrait Gallery or something, the
Tate Modern, I can't remember. And I remember leaving his
house the following day and getting in a black taxi
and the cave.
Speaker 5 (18:38):
Saying have you seen the news of the world today?
And I was like, what, you know?
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Twenty one?
Speaker 5 (18:42):
And he said have you seen the news of the world
And I said no, and he said, you're.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
All over it, and he threw a copy of the
newspaper in the back of the cab and there we
were on the front. It was so it was honestly
like normal life to absolute surreal, you know, life after
that and I got home to my flat and there
were photographers all outside my flat and that was it.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
That was it.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
It was gloves off at that moment in culture where
the tabloids had all the power and young women were
really persecuted and men.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
But it was really crazy.
Speaker 5 (19:13):
And at first it was kind of funny. I felt
like Lara Croft.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
Or in some virtual experience, and my friends we'd like
run away and try and hide, and it was giggly.
But it became very quickly very insidious, because it was
threatening and aggressive, and it really took over my entire identity.
I felt like was being written and read by people.
(19:38):
But I felt so out of control in a really
formative moment. And this all happened before that film had
come out, or any film would come out. I was
at the very beginning of my career, and I do
look back and wonder how different things would have been
if I had been known as an actor first. It
was a lot of a battle to kind of establish
(19:59):
myself and be taken seriously and not seen as someone
who wore ice clothes or had a famous boyfriend or
It was a battle, and I think I definitely ate
through it.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
I'm sure at.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
That time, but it was. And then of course the
phone hacking. I knew that was going on at the time.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
It was very.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
Difficult because it would be well, it would be impossible
for them to know half of what they knew without
some form of eavesdropping. And I think there were bugs
put in houses and in cars, and trackers on cars
and all sorts of it was and you feel like
you're going mad. But clicks on the line of my
mother's landline. So it was relieving in a way to
(20:40):
know that I hadn't gone mad when I found out.
But to find out was really difficult. I had to
take the met Police to court to get the evidence
that they had in order to take the news of
the world to court, and they wanted twenty one days
to hand it over the evidence that they had, and
the judge said, hand it over today in these four
huge boxes with emails and phone numbers and numbers of
(21:02):
my friends and anyway, in the end, I didn't settle
out of court. I took them to court, which meant
I got far less money than I would have done
had I been quiet. But actually it's one of the
proudest things that I did. And now some of the
friends whose numbers they also had, got some money too,
so it kind of feels like that's a lovely that's
(21:24):
a lovely ending.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
To a saga.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Yeah, I was so comfort you could find in those
days into cooking or to.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
The cooking was always a grounding.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
I mean, it was a decade really of harassment, but
as much as possible, it's okay because it sucks in retrospect,
but it also is a huge part of who.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
I am and why I am.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
The way that I am and what matters to me
is very clear, and what doesn't matter and what's out
of your control is also very clear. And I think
I tried to control it for a long time and
then gave up. And I know my friends, my family,
the people I love, the restaurants I love, the food
I love. The community around me is sacred and respected,
and the rest I don't care. I feel like everyone
(22:11):
in the world see my you know, dirty underwear. It's
like there's nothing more I can. Everyone knows everything, whatever
it's But I know the power.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Yeah, that's you're saying that gives you if you have
been killed, you know there are people who have been destroyed.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
Well, no, I'm proud that I didn't go that far,
but I understand absolutely why you lose your mind. It
kind of perpetuates behavior that coping mechanisms that are toxic,
drinking too much or going out too much, or just
keeping moving, because it's also crazy and you can see
why people unravel, and actually it suits them. The more
(22:46):
you unravel, they're kind of encouraging you to do that
because that sells mere papers.
Speaker 5 (22:50):
Now, So it's it's wonderful in a way.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
I'm not a fan of social media, but I respect
that women now have an opportunity to that their voice
is powerful, that anything anyone could write, or they have
a means to retaliate. I just got incredibly litigious, and
then you'd get an apology that's that big, tiny in
a newspaper that anyone to use. I mean, it's nice
that it's come full circle and we look back on
(23:14):
that behavior and can't believe that that was allowed. It
feels like another person, another world, another life.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
Do you remember the people who helped you through this?
Speaker 3 (23:23):
Yeah, I've been fortunate. I've never had a friend seller
story in my life. I had a very strong core
group of friends from a young age, from ten from
my senior school, one of whom is in this room
right now, my first and oldest friend.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
Do you remember going through this, Yeah, very much. So, yeah,
running away from.
Speaker 5 (23:42):
She's six foot tall and im and I'm not.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
She was my security. But also she was sometimes a decoy,
so we'd put like a jump a jacket over her
head and she'd run out of the theater. I was
doing a play, even though I'd suddenly grown six you know,
however many inches.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
They didn't really notice.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
It's such chaos, but but player doing My first way
was as you like it, the windoms, Yeah, but I think, yeah,
having that stability in my family, my mother, my sister,
it kept it kept me anchored in a way where
I feel like if I didn't have that, I understand
how people derail completely.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
If you like listening to Ruthie's Table for would you
please make sure to rate and review the podcast on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Thank you. What did you do during COVID for food?
It was interesting.
Speaker 3 (24:43):
All I did in COVID was cook We were Where
were you?
Speaker 1 (24:46):
Upstate New York? Were in North Salem?
Speaker 2 (24:49):
Yeah, I'm from you know, I'm from right, which is
a bit further, Ye, a bit further.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
Of course, you are Woodstock, so you could take the
girl out of stuff you made.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
That makes so much sense. I wasn't really like that.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
Did you go to the festival? No, I had my
tonsils out. I know my parents would let me go.
I was having They scheduled that, well, nobody knew it
was gonna be there, and I mean that could be
like that. Also, it was an inwood stock because at
the last minute, the town fathers or whatever, we had
to do it on that guy's farm. Yeah, but I
was kind of like slightly nerdy about studying. I was
(25:28):
surrounded by people doing everything wild and I was a
girl who did her homework for a while. And we
were in My friend Libby and I had a test.
So we went to the local cafe and we were
sitting there studying and Bob Dylan sent a note. We
saw him and it was just when he was kind
of starting out, but he was already famous, and he
sent us a note saying, would you like to come
(25:48):
come back to my house and watch the band rehearse?
Speaker 1 (25:51):
And we sent back a note saying, no, we have
a test tomorrow. Oh my god. So there you go. WOWE,
Well maybe it's better. Probably failed it. I don't know,
but I don't.
Speaker 3 (26:03):
Wonder if i'd gone back, Yeah, I think gone to
I would have definitely.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
I know you know that song you'd never regret rim Well,
there you go.
Speaker 3 (26:15):
Maybe that's when I would have actually instigated you were
a better woman than I are. There's still time, maybe
I should get to make it really nice.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
You remember fifty years ago when you invited that one's ready?
Speaker 1 (26:31):
Ready?
Speaker 2 (26:32):
Now I've decided, yeah, you could come back.
Speaker 3 (26:36):
Prize winning poet quite rightly, So yeah, I completely agree.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
He totally deserved it.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
So you filmed in Venice and your Venice Shreveport.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
I filmed in so many places all over the world.
In Venice, I lived by the fish market.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
What was that like?
Speaker 3 (26:54):
Well, just the produce that you get, and I became
friends with all the stall kind of the people proprietors
at the stool, and the quality of tomatoes.
Speaker 5 (27:03):
That's the thing I really lament about living in England.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
But what month were you there?
Speaker 3 (27:07):
I was there from July June till November. So from
the most kind of glorious boiling hot to it being
really moody and foggy, but watching the transition of the
seasons through the produce of the food and the fish
market was just stunning.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
I don't cook enough fish. I need to get better
at that. Okay, we can work on that. Yeah, that's easy.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
We just talk about going to a city, going to
a town, and going to a market. It tells you
where you are the way the Venetians might shout and
towards Bologna they might just put everything out wait for
you to come to them. And then probably in Naples,
the arrival of the produce, and it does there is
a dynamic, do you.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
Think, absolutely?
Speaker 3 (27:51):
And then markets in France very intimidating for me. I
feel like as an english person trying to navigate a
French market is just it's just intimidating. There is a
superiority and often rightly so with the French cooking and
the French produce, and sometimes it's it's charming. And I
love the I love places in Provence and outside. I
(28:11):
love going to a market is my favorite pastime.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
Do you find out if there are markets before you
go there?
Speaker 5 (28:18):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (28:18):
Yeah, and the days of them. But the Italians are
just a little bit more gregarious.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
The French are a little bit more Have you ever
tried to touch a mallan in France?
Speaker 1 (28:28):
Did you get hit.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
That's the worst the disappointment prog all the French people
who are listening here. We really respect your food culture.
We think it's amazing. It is abas, it is incredible.
The way they will, you know, they really understand. But
it took me. I lived in Paris for six years
and it took me really a while to understand.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
You do not touch. Oh that's a really good touch.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
And maybe this is different but now but you know,
if you see a peach and you might want to
hold it for a minute, No, you don't. Do You
just trust that they're all perfect? And how do you
eat apart from cooking your own food? Do you when
you know you're filming all day, will you eat a breakfast?
Speaker 1 (29:10):
You say you don't eat a lot?
Speaker 3 (29:11):
No, I will if I'm not that early often filming
Europe at five or earlier. I'll be ravenous by the
time it's you know, breakfast time, and I will have
whatever they cook on set. I mean, I'm not too fussy,
I think because of the boarding school upbringing. If I
add enough salt to anything, I'll eat it. I don't
love awful. I wish I did, because I feel like
such a foodie, but I grew up loving steak and
(29:34):
kidney pie, and now I don't think. I don't think
I want too much awful.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
When you acted in Burnt, Yes you played. Tell us
about playing a chef.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
Well, I love cooking, as you know, and food, and
so the idea of playing a chef in a two
Michelin star or a kitchen that was going for Michelin
Stars was was incredible. We got trained by Marcus Wareing
and who's lovely, and I actually got to do I
did a service in his restaurant, The Barkley, which has
(30:05):
two Michelin Stars, and I was on the fish station.
He taught me how to fill it a turbot, which
is really difficult, and then I was on the I
was essentially on fish and we had a working kitchen
for the entire duration of that shoot, and Marcus was
on set, so every burner was on. You know, you
really were part of a troop of a tribe of
(30:25):
sort of chefs. And at the end of it, he
said to me, you're a cook, and you've got a place.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
In my kitchen.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
Ah, And I know, so I've got this backup plan
calling you Yeah, yeah, Well this is more my style
of cooking, but his is very He's good, he's amazing,
and it's but it's forensic.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Yeah, but that's good as a kind of starter as well,
that you start with it, you know, loading.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
Your lines exactly. And I went to the library with Brett.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
What did you do that?
Speaker 3 (30:53):
I kind of just sat in the kitchen for a
service and watched and the differences in people's kitchens. So
Marcus is very he's got a military background. It's incredibly christine,
it's incredibly ordered. Brett's is kind of chaotic. Yours is
like a family kitchen. You know, you so can tell
the personality of a chef by the way they run
their kitchen.
Speaker 6 (31:12):
Have you done improvisation the I've sort of I've been
made to in workshopping a play or playing around with
something on a set before you start filming.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
It's funny.
Speaker 5 (31:26):
I get quite intimidated by improvising.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
I did this film called American Woman that very few
people saw, but I was so proud of it. But
Christina Hendrix played my sister, and Jake Scott directed it,
whose father is Ridley Scott, the kind of legendary film
director family, and Jake wanted me and Christina to really
have that sisterly bond before we started shooting, and he
(31:51):
said to me, I want you guys to go upstairs.
It was the day we met and put makeup on
each other like you might have done as children.
Speaker 5 (31:56):
And we were just like, no, please, God, don't make
us do that.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
It will be so uncomfortable. You know.
Speaker 3 (32:02):
It's there's such a trust that comes with it, and
and comedians are amazing at it.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
I like to think of myself as really funny. But
for some reason, thanks.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
Realthing, you had to improvise with Larry David and Curby
Your Enthusiasm, one of my favorite programs of all time.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
What was it like?
Speaker 3 (32:17):
Well, I kind of accosted Larry David in the way
I might Bob Dylan at the Vanity Fair party in Hollywood,
which sounds so glamorous and it is unless you're me
and you drink too many martiniz and sort.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
Of over excited.
Speaker 3 (32:29):
And there was Larry David by the bar, and Ollie,
my boyfriend introduced me really to Cub's. He's sort of
Larry in training. I think he will end up that way.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
It could be worse. I always say that Larry really
never does anything wrong.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
He does the greatest humoring. Yehs just you know, he
gets into trouble and he'd probably get you. But he's
actually essentially such a good person.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
He's a great with a huge heart.
Speaker 3 (32:54):
And I think I was obviously so enthusiastically kind of
pouring my praise on him that it got the cogs turning.
And about six months later he was like, I had
this idea for Curb and basically you're hitting on me
and I.
Speaker 5 (33:09):
So obviously I was flirtatious, but Ollie was there.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
I wasn't deliberately anyway.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
I then you get a skeleton script. It looks a
little bit like this recipe, and it's sort of like
Siena is converting to guodaism, sees Larry at the at
the temple and comes up and talks to him.
Speaker 5 (33:28):
So you get an idea of where the scene has
to go.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
But you're improvising with one of the great if not
the greatest.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
Ill if you were improvising, you did so well well.
Speaker 5 (33:36):
It was terrifying. I was not comfortable.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
Yeah, but he's wonderful because he finds the whole thing
incredibly funny.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
The last question I will ask you is that describe
times in your life or days in your life, or
maybe places in your life where you had food And
you actually asked me that question. When it becomes food
becomes something that is not just to alleviate hunger or
to share with your children or to experience together or
to relax with with quickly, but it loss can be comfort.
(34:09):
Is there something that you would go to in your
whole life?
Speaker 3 (34:12):
There are several things, but I'm an enormous spaghetti bolonnes
guy and Tory who's.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
In this room.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
We do lots of work with the International Medical Corps,
which is an NGO, and as a result of that,
we've traveled all over the world to really remote places.
Northern Nigeria in a kind of Boko Haram region and
it's dangerous, Congo and Haiti and all sorts of places,
but you can often find a bolonnaise.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
Bizarrely, and one of the.
Speaker 3 (34:39):
Best spaghetti bolonneses we ever had, we were going to
do a bolonnes tour of the world because we are
obsessed with it. I think it's so delicious was in
northern Nigeria in this tiny, very weird hotel. It was amazing,
wasn't it. You didn't order it the first night, and
then we both ordered it. I had it twice in
our own You had it the second night.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
It was that good. Well do you know what made it? So?
Speaker 2 (35:00):
Do?
Speaker 3 (35:00):
I don't, And I'm quite a cheap date. But I
think it was beef. But I think anything would have been.
You know, something familiar in that in that environment is
but I love a bolonnaise. I love chicken soup if
I'm sick. I guess that's the Jewish influence.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
I love curry. You know. Do we just talk about
the NGA? Yes, tell us about.
Speaker 3 (35:23):
Well, in twenty ten, I became an ambassador for this
NGO called the International Medical Core.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
So they basically provide healthcare for displaced people all around
the world.
Speaker 3 (35:34):
And I visit their programs and they it's water, sanitation, inoculations, feeding,
and you get assigned different departments to kind of run.
But they their ethos is really holistic in that they
don't just go in and administer or band aid and
provide this service and then leave. They train locals to
become able to run the program, so it's becomes ultimately
(35:56):
self sufficient. And it's an extraordinary experience to visit these
places and meet these survivors of all sorts of terrible famine.
You know, in the Congo it was rape was a
method of war and incredibly harrowing places to visit and
experience is to have. But they're an incredible organization and
(36:18):
I think ninety eight point six percent of every dollar
goes straight to the field.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
Are you still working with them?
Speaker 5 (36:24):
Yeah, I am, I am. I haven't done a trip
for a while.
Speaker 3 (36:28):
The last one was quite intense and dangerous in Nigeria,
and I then got pregnant and then COVID. You know,
I need to do another one.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
But you can always do more.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
Thank you, sir, Thanks for one time, what a great play.
Speaker 3 (36:47):
Thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership
with Montclair
Host
Ruth Rogers
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