Thaao Penghlis Shares Meeting Jacqueline Kennedy and Seducing Celebrities One Meal at a Time

Whether he’s playing Tony or Andre, Thaao Penghlis has cooked up many schemes on Days of our Lives. Now, the actor/author is dishing with Soap Hub about his new cookbook, Seducing Celebrities One Meal at a Time.

Cooking With Class

World traveler, actor, and author, Penghlis says a series of experiences led him to take pen to paper and write Seducing Celebrities One Meal at a Time. He was partially inspired after taking a trip to Cuba where he dined at a restaurant that had a photo on its wall of many celebrities who had eaten there. He got the idea that those stars may have been “seduced” by the ambiance and the wonderful meals that the establishment served. “That’s when the idea came to me,” he says.

Serendipitously, upon his return to the United States, his manager said to him, “It’s time for you to write a cookbook.” Penghlis says: “I thought how about I love food and how conversations [over meals] can reach people. Those talks can be wonderful, argumentative, and insightful. I’ve had so many dinner parties over the years. Food is a celebration of life.”

Penghlis has had many encounters both on set and off with celebrities that also inspired the book. At 21 years old, he was working in a New York art gallery as an apprentice making $75 a week. One day, Jacqueline Kennedy showed up at the gallery with two bodyguards.

As fate would have it, Penghlis was working alone that day. “My boess was having lunch with Claudette Colbert,” he recalls. “So, I gave [Jacquline] the tour of the gallery; the catalogue of 18th Century items was in my head. I didn’t know my diplomatic corps training was going to come in handy that day.”

Penghlis and Kennedy ended up having tea at the gallery and he provided some Greek shortbread for their respite which he’d made himself. “It’s called Kourambiedes,” he says. “I thought, ‘Wow, what a distinguished and wonderful human being she was — so wonderfully dressed and she was interested in my culture.”

A few months later, Penghlis says, Kennedy wed Aristotle Onassis. “I thought, ‘What would I serve her if she was coming to my house for dinner?” the actor muses. “I knew she loved the Greek shortbread but what would I cook for her? So, for each individual I’ve met or worked with, I have a recipe for what I’d serve.”

His encounter with the former First Lady and others led to what is just not another cookbook. “My endeavor is to continue this magnificent expression of life by giving back to those who made a difference,” Penghlis says.

If you’re in the Los Angeles area on Wednesday, May 22 at 7 p.m., you can meet Thaao Penghlis at the Barnes & Noble at the Grove where he’ll be discussing and signing copies of Seducing Celebrities One Meal at a Time. Click here for details.