Paul Hollywood

Paul John Hollywood (born 1 March 1966) is an English celebrity chef and television personality, widely known as a judge on The Great British Bake Off since 2010.

Hollywood began his career at his father's bakery as a teenager and went on to serve as head baker at a number of British and international hotels.

After returning from working in Cyprus, Hollywood appeared as a guest on a number of British television programmes on both BBC and ITV.

After beginning his broadcast career in food programming, he diversified into other areas, including motoring.

Hollywood was born in 1966 in Wallasey, Cheshire, the son of bakery proprietor John F. Hollywood and Gillian M. Hollywood (nee Harman).

He was a pupil at The Mosslands School.

Hollywood studied sculpture at the Wallasey School of Art based at Liscard Hall, but left to start work as a baker.

He first worked in his father's bakery in York (the headquarters of a chain called Bread Winner which eventually stretched all the way down the east coast from Aberdeen to Lincolnshire) and then in other bakeries on Merseyside.

He eventually went on to become head baker at a number of hotels including The Dorchester, Chester Grosvenor and Spa, and the Cliveden Hotel.

He then left the UK for Cyprus, where he worked at two resorts.

Hollywood has appeared in guest spots on a number of television programmes, including BBC One's The Generation Game, The Heaven and Earth Show, ITV's This Morning, and The Alan Titchmarsh Show.

The Gourmand World Cookbook Awards named his 2005 book 100 Great Breads as the "Top Bread and Pastry Book" for that year.

In 2008, Hollywood created an almond and roquefort sourdough recipe that was said to be the most expensive bread in Britain.

The roquefort is supplied from a specialist in France at £15 per kilo, while the flour for the bread is made by a miller in Wiltshire.

Hollywood describes it as a "Rolls-Royce of loaves".

Hollywood is a guest speaker at several food festivals, including the Cumbrian Food Festival, and the BBC Good Food Show and the Cake and Bake Show, both in London.

Since the show launched in 2010, Hollywood has been a judge on the BBC programme The Great British Bake Off.

In this capacity, he has been described as the "antidote" to judges such as Len Goodman or Simon Cowell in other reality television programmes, on account of his straightforward and honest manner and because his judging is restricted purely to the finished product.

His partnership with Mary Berry has been described in The Guardian as being the "secret weapon" of the show and potentially one of the best judging combinations to have appeared on reality television.

In May 2013, Hollywood began appearing as a judge on The American Baking Competition on CBS.

Hollywood has also starred in Sadie J, a children's television programme.

In 2013, he presented Paul Hollywood’s Bread on BBC Two, in which he gave advice on recipes for different types of bread; however, also featured on the series were recipes for some cakes such as the Danish pastry.

He also presented Paul Hollywood's Pies and Puds, a cookery television series on BBC One.

In August 2015, Hollywood was featured on the BBC genealogy documentary series Who Do You Think You Are? The programme revealed that his grandfather Norman Harman, who served in the Army during World War II, saw action in the Tunisia Campaign and at the Battle of Anzio and that his great-great-grandfather, Kenneth MacKenzie, had been a policeman in the City of Glasgow Police in the 1850s.

Hollywood's great-great-great-grandfather, Donald MacKenzie, had been a crofter in Poolewe, Wester Ross.

Donald had also been the post-runner between Poolewe and Dingwall, where he delivered post on foot over a distance of 60 miles.

He covered this distance every week, during his forties, on foot for over a decade.

He lived into his 80s.

In 2015, Hollywood began his racing career; in that year, he made his debut in the Beechdean AMR Aston Martin Vantage GT4 with Andrew Howard, founder of Beechdean Dairies.

In September 2016, Love Productions agreed to a three-year deal to move the show from the BBC to Channel 4.

Hosts Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins announced that they would not be moving to the new network, followed shortly after by Berry.

On the same day as Berry, Hollywood announced that he would be staying with the show.

In May and June 2017, he presented Paul Hollywood's Big Continental Road Trip.

In December 2017, Hollywood appeared as a judge on The Great American Baking Show, the second incarnation of the GBBO series in the United States.

In 2019, Hollywood made a comment on The Great British Bake Off that a cake looked like "diabetes on a plate" and after complaints, he apologised on his social media.

In November 2019, the four-part series Paul Goes to Hollywood premiered on Food Network; the series follows Paul Hollywood on a 3000-mile culinary road trip across America, travelling from New York to Los Angeles on a Harley-Davidson motorcycle.

Hollywood travelled across Japan to discover some of the finest culinary experiences the country has to offer in the three-part Channel 4 series called Paul Hollywood Eats Japan; aired during April–May 2020.

In December 2020, Hollywood was featured in a two-part Channel 4 series called The Great British Bake Off: Best Bits; celebrating some of the most memorable moments from the first ten years of the series.

Later in 2022, the three-part series Paul Hollywood Eats Mexico will premier on Channel 4; the series follows Paul Hollywood as he experiences authentic local cuisine on a culinary tour across Mexico.

In May 2023, Hollywood appeared in the trailer for the BBC coverage of the Eurovision Song Contest, which was being hosted that year in Liverpool.