OLIVIA WILDE INTERVIEWWomen’s Health Magazine, November 2008.
Part -3
The two certainly don’t live like nobility. Their bohemian Venice Beach loft is crammed with oversize abstract art, ethnic furniture, and cookbooks scarred with food stains. “I used to play hooky from school so I could watch cooking shows,” says Wilde, who loves to throw impromptu dinner parties. She tries to be relaxed about her eating, but she avoids bread and pasta as much as possible–not always easy when you’re married to an Italian. Cheese and good wine, however, are daily staples. “I don’t own a scale, and Tao banned the word fat from our house,” she says. “If we eat too much, we say, ‘I feel clogged up.’”
Wilde–who actually has won a few eating contests in her day–knows that feeling well. “Once, in Australia, I ate 33 pancakes in 20 minutes, and I only did it because they said a girl could never enter the competition,” she says proudly. “I won against these giant men, and they were convinced I was cheating. Guys have some sort of sick fascination with girls who can eat.” Conversely, Wilde says, women seem to get off on women who don’t eat. A year ago, during a visit to Thailand with her husband, she caught a nasty case of Dengue fever and lost about 15 pounds. “I looked really thin, and all the men in my life were worried about me,” she says. “But all the women in my life were proud of me. They started calling it ‘the Dengue diet.’
”To work off the occasional pound or three of pancakes, Wilde exercises daily. She spins at a local studio (a fact she’s embarrassed to admit, since she’s just blocks from the beach). “I make fun of it, but it’s amazing, because you have to push yourself through this resistance, which is so therapeutic,” she says. “And they say you can burn nearly 800 calories in, like, 45 minutes if you push it to the highest level.” She also does yoga, dabbles in karate, and hikes regularly with her dogs: a bulldog named Lola that she lovingly refers to as “a side of ham” and a fluffy mutt that goes by Paco. In 2006 Paco won a contest to be the “spokesdog” for Old Navy. He traveled, sat for photo shoots, and got paid (his salary went to a canine charity). “He still acts like a doggie model sometimes. If I put a T-shirt on him, he won’t move. He thinks he’s back at the job; he’ll strike a pose and just sit there.”
As for herself, she’ll pass on posing for hours on end. “It would be so depressing to be a model and not get to say a word,” she says. “There’s no personality involved.” Even perfecting a paparazzi-worthy smile for the red carpet has been a challenge. “I got a tip, which sounds ridiculous but actually works,” she says. She suddenly flinches, like she’s in extreme pain, and says “Ouf!” Is it appendicitis, doc? Another bout of Dengue fever? Nope. “You have to smile like someone just punched you in the stomach. Bam! Smile! Bam! Smile!”
