Lisa Faulkner may have turned 50 earlier this year but the actress and TV chef has never looked better.
However, the former Celebrity MasterChef winner is the first to admit that she wasn’t overly thrilled about the milestone birthday.
“I had a real wobble about it, I really worried about turning 50 and then actually it was great,” she says. “I feel very grateful that I’ve turned 50 so I focus on how lucky I am to be here rather than how old I’ve turned.”
For someone who wasn’t feeling great about entering a new decade, Lisa certainly celebrated in style and spent the weekend at Soho Farmhouse with her loved ones. “I had such a lovely time with my close friends and family,” she explains. “I built it up to be such a big thing in my head and then actually it wasn’t. You have to do what you want to do. I didn’t want to have a massive party, I just wanted my family and friends to have a lovely dinner and dance around the living room.”
Now that the birthday celebrations are over, Lisa will no doubt be focusing on her third wedding anniversary next month, having got married to MasterChef judge and TV chef John Torode, 57, in October 2019. The pair met on the show in 2010 when Lisa was a contestant and became firm friends before falling in love after they both separated from their partners. And now the couple are making a living out of working together on their hit show, John & Lisa’s Weekend Kitchen .
So how does she find working with her husband? “When we work together it’s usually for a short space of time,” Lisa says. “John does his thing and I do mine and then we come together to do John & Lisa’s Weekend Kitchen, but we love it, it’s so lovely. It’s so much fun because the producers just let us cook. They put the ingredients in front of us, say ‘action’ and we
cook and chat as if we’re at home.”
Lisa, who has a teenage daughter, Billie, with former husband Chris Coghill, goes on to tell us that food is a hugely important part of their life, saying, “I think it’s really important to sit and have that time together as a family and have some food. We show our love by cooking and we love to do it.”
John, who has two grown-up sons, Casper and Marselle, from his first marriage, and Jonah, 17, and Lulu, 15, from his second, was awarded an MBE earlier this year for services to food and charity, and proud Lisa tells us that she celebrated by cooking one of her favourite dishes from her childhood.
She says, “Food and memories are so intertwined. I smell roast lamb and I’m immediately taken back to my grandmother’s kitchen on a Sunday. With a coronation chicken topper, I have a real childhood memory of mum entertaining for Charles and Diana’s wedding. I then recreated it for William and Kate’s wedding and then Harry and Meghan’s and the Jubilee. Then when John got his MBE. To draw on that nostalgia is really lovely.”
On the topic of food, the former EastEnders and Holby City star is chatting to us today about a campaign she’s working on with cracker brand Carr’s. She explains, “Carr’s has done some research and found that 64 per cent of people admit to using their phones at the dinner table, which means that people aren’t really connecting. Carr’s also found that 43 per cent of us haven’t entertained at home for the last three months. We’re trying to get people to reconnect and become confident enough to have people over and to put down the phone and have some lovely conversation.”
So do Lisa and John put their phones away when they sit down with their kids to eat?
“John and I have always had a rule that if we’re sitting down as a family or with friends, we don’t have our phones,” she says. “If you’re on the run and having breakfast or grabbing lunch then I totally get that you’ll be on your phone, we don’t have a rule then. But if we’re having dinner together as a family, we put our phones away. Having kids of different ages, especially teenagers, it’s really nice to just be able to connect. Even if it’s about cooking or making something or setting a table, just interacting with people. They are upstairs on their phones most of the time so you need to find those moments to chat, whether it is just those moments of, ‘Oh my gosh, I absolutely love what you’ve made for dinner,’ or, ‘How do we make this?’ or, ‘Can we make this together?’ Even if it’s who is going to be stacking the dishwasher, it’s just having those moments of positive interaction and chat.”
But it’s not just her family Lisa likes to hang out with over the dinner table. She also loves seeing her friends, such as her longtime besties Angela Griffin and Nicola Stephenson, who live close by.
She says, “I do love having people over. We go to our friends’ as well, we have a little group that all hang out together quite a lot, so whether it’s at our house or theirs, we all bring a plate and everyone sits round chatting and eating.”
It’s not all about food, though, and Lisa, who has been acting since she was 19, is still keen to be taken seriously as an actress. “I would love to do some more acting,” she admits.
“There are slightly better roles for women over 50 but not in abundance, which is sad because women over 50 are probably the biggest watchers of television, but we don’t seem to be represented as well as we should be. I’m hoping there will be more and more parts. I love the fact that I can still act and I hope I will be acting and cooking into my eighties. I would love to do something gritty or a period drama. I would love to wear a bonnet.”
So what has been her career highlight so far? “I feel very grateful for every job. I have been so proud and happy with every acting job, then going into Celebrity MasterChef and winning it was a huge high.”
But for anyone who thinks that celebs on the show get special treatment, think again!
She says, “I thought with it being celebrities you’d be taken into hair and make-up, but no, you just go in as you are. I also thought they might say, ‘Let’s cook,’ and there would be a bit of time and they might help you. I had no idea that literally you just have to cook and nobody helps you, and you have to do it all in real time.”
The fact that she’s been on the show herself means that when she appears as a guest judge, Lisa has huge amounts of empathy for the contestants. She adds, “You know the pressure that they’re under because you’ve been through it!”
