Learning about issues such as sustainability and locavorism are things that you need to have as part of you as a chef because it will make you cook more delicious food.

There is no conflict between a better meal and a better world.

I had turned down other head chef jobs. I didn't want to take over someone else's cuisine. I wanted to start from scratch.

Fifteen years ago, France was the promised land of cooking. So I looked at a map, found five restaurants and faxed them to ask for a job. Within five minutes, I got a reply from the then three- star Le Jardin des Sens in Montpellier.

My undergraduate studies at Brown and graduate degrees from Harvard prepared me for a multifaceted career as an actor, entrepreneur and philanthropist.

When I'm sitting around, I'm thinking about how I can make my next professional career move, but more than anything, I'm thinking about the meaning of life and how fleeting it is.

I firmly believe that everyone should have to work in the food service industry at least once in their lives.

I'm glad to have grown up in the countryside and played, and had to use my imagination rather than a TV and had to learn to act the hard way, to have dealt with the rejection. It's a life as well as a job, at the end the day, we all have to work for a living, but we have to have a life as well.