Paul Hollywood

Paul Hollywood
Hollywood at the Liverpool Food and Drinks Festival, 2012
Born	Paul John Hollywood (1966-03-01) 1 March 1966 (age 50) Wallasey, Cheshire, England
Spouse(s)	Alexandra Hollywood
Children	Josh Hollywood
Website	paulhollywood.com
Culinary career
Cooking style	Baking
Television show(s) Paul Hollywood: City Bakes Paul Hollywood's Pies and Puds The Great British Bake Off The American Baking Competition Use Your Loaf Paul Hollywood's Bread
Award(s) won Gourmand World Cookbook Awards Top Bread and Pastry Book (2005)

Paul John Hollywood (born 1 March 1966) is an English celebrity chef, best known for being a judge on The Great British Bake Off alongside Mary Berry, from 2010 until 2016, whilst the show was on the BBC. He is moving with the show to Channel 4.

He began his career at his father's bakery as a teenager and went on to serve as head baker at a number of hotels around Britain and internationally. After returning from working in Cyprus, Hollywood began appearing in guest spots on a number of British television programmes on both BBC and ITV.

Paul John Hollywood was born in 1966 in Wallasey, on the Wirral, in Cheshire, the son of bakery proprietor, John F. Hollywood and Gillian M. Harman; his grandfather was head baker at The Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool. He was a pupil at The Mosslands School. Hollywood studied sculpture at the Wallasey School of Art, but quit the course 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 and ITV's This Morning and The Alan Titchmarsh Show. 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 TV 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 TV. 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.