With his tattooed biceps, artfully dishevelled hair and mournful, blue-eyed gaze, Carmen ‘Carmy’ Berzatto hardly needs to display his ability with a paring knife to show that chefs can be sexy.
Not that he has any time for romantic distractions in the hit TV series The Bear, in which the character gives up a glittering career as an acclaimed chef in New York to take over his late brother’s rundown sandwich shop in Chicago.
A sensitive, scarred soul, Carmy struggles with the repercussions of his brother’s suicide and daily screaming matches with his kitchen staff.
‘I understand people having a crush on Carmy. I think I have a bit of a crush on Carmy,’ jokes Jeremy Allen White, the actor who plays him.
That sounds like false modesty, as 32-year-old White knows full well that his huge female following sees little distinction between him and the character he plays – witness the wild whooping that greeted White on Monday night as he took to the stage at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles to accept the award for outstanding lead actor in a comedy series at the Emmys.
Jeremy Allen White showcased his toned body for an ad campaign for Calvin Klein
He plays The Bear’s lead character, chef Carmen ‘Carmy’ Berzatto
Yet his decision to dedicate the gong, which he won shortly after picking up the best actor award at the Golden Globes, to his two young daughters was surely bittersweet given that the troubled actor now has to have an alcohol breathalyser test every time he wants to see them.
The enormous appeal of Tinseltown’s latest heartthrob – whose roguish image has created such carnal frenzy on social media that he’s been dubbed ‘the internet’s new boyfriend’ – was driven home earlier this month when Calvin Klein launched an advertising campaign featuring a musclebound White stripping down to a pair of its skin-tight boxers.
A TV commercial released in the US on January 4 shows White climbing the stairs to the roof of a sun-splashed office building in his native New York. Once there, the camera lingers lovingly over his heavily muscled torso as he peels off his singlet and shorts, athletically scales a ladder and vaults a fire escape before sprawling sensually on a red sofa.
It helps that White was in peak physical condition when the shoot took place thanks to a punishing fitness regime designed to bulk him up for his role as a wrestler in the film The Iron Claw.
It certainly had the desired effect. Sexually provocative adverts are the stock-in-trade of the fashion giant but the results were astonishing: industry experts estimate that the ad generated £10 million worth of media exposure for Calvin Klein in less than 48 hours.
The buzz surrounding the ads was turned up a notch shortly afterwards when the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) banned posters from a Calvin Klein campaign which featured the British singer FKA Twigs with a breast partially exposed. The regulator said it ‘presented her as a stereotypical sexual object’ and could not be shown in Britain.
In a comment widely seen as a reference to the White advert, the ASA’s ruling was condemned by Twigs because of ‘double standards’, thus ensuring yet more media coverage for Calvin Klein.
Jeremy Allen White attended the Golden Globes in January 2023 with his then wife Addison Timlin, despite it later being revealed that they had separated in September 2022
White may be a ‘stereotypical sexual object’ himself now, but this transition from TV star to global love god certainly hasn’t been bad for him.
His breakout role was in a US remake of the Channel 4 comedy drama Shameless that first aired in 2011.
But his career has shot into the stratosphere on the back of two series of The Bear – shown on Hulu and Disney+ – which have led to his first major feature film, The Iron Claw, which is already out in the US and will be released in the UK on February 9.
The biographical drama about a beefcake American professional wrestling family, the Von Erichs, will, inevitably, provide White’s legions of breathless fans with an extended opportunity to once again appreciate the hard work he has been putting in at the gym. He gained 20lbs of muscle to play the strapping Kerry Von Erich – a huge amount given that White is only 5ft 7in tall.
It may also offer further confirmation of something that industry insiders have been whispering for months – that the chain-smoking Brooklyn-born actor could well be Hollywood’s next superstar.
Despite his diminutive stature, big nose, protruding eyes and strong resemblance to a young Gene Wilder, the social media generation – which often prefers its pin-ups to be ‘alt’ (alternative) rather than conventionally Hollywood handsome – reckons White has the right stuff.
Also ‘alt’ would be the fact that he has so far shunned romantic roles in favour of playing struggling ordinary Joes. In interviews, he comes across as self-assured but down-to-earth and unstarry, preferring to chat about his favourite pairs of trainers and how he cycles round with a music speaker attached to his bike rather than partying with A-listers.
Jeremy Allen White strips down to his boxers in the Calvin Klein ad campaign. The TV commercial first aired on January 4
Fans have gone wild over the raunchy Calvin Klein advertising campaign
However, this unpretentious image conceals considerable personal turmoil. In grand Hollywood tradition, insiders say that sudden and intense fame has been something that White, and some of those close to him, have found hard to handle.
In May last year, his actress wife Addison Timlin, with whom he has two daughters, Ezer, five, and Dolores, three, announced that she was divorcing him, ending their marriage after less than four years. Timlin later revealed they’d actually separated the previous September.
The couple, who live in LA, had first met as teenagers on the set of 2008 film Afterschool and first hinted that they were in a relationship five years later.
Shortly after news of the divorce broke, Timlin confided on Instagram that ‘being a single mum is not how I pictured it’.
In a soul-bearing post, she wrote: ‘It is so f***ing hard. It is all out covered in s*** crying on the floor kick you in the shins screaming with no sound coming out hard. It’s not the natural order of things. It can be exhausting but more than anything it can just be so lonely.’
This was quite a blow for White’s fans. A few months earlier he had not only declared his love for his wife on stage at the Golden Globes while picking up his first Globe for The Bear, but also told Vanity Fair: ‘I probably wouldn’t have done well if I were single or without children, or just younger and dumber. If you don’t have a foundation outside of your career, that can be a lonely existence.’
White was reportedly ‘blindsided’ by his wife’s outburst on social media as he regarded himself as an ‘involved’ dad, but a source quoted by Entertainment Tonight said the couple had been having ‘trust issues’ that led to the divorce.
The star won an Emmy for best actor for his role as Carmy in The Bear
Friends insisted that he didn’t cheat on her, dismissing an anonymous claim on a showbusiness gossip site that he’d had an affair with a personal assistant on the set of The Bear. They instead claimed that White’s packed filming schedule in Chicago had put intolerable pressure on their relationship.
Then, last October, it was revealed that, in order to gain joint custody of the children, White had agreed to undergo regular alcohol testing while he was looking after them.
Apparently, Timlin had insisted on these draconian terms after observing ‘red flags’ when White drank ‘a few too many’ during their relationship.
As a result, White had to use Soberlink, an at-home alcohol-monitoring device fitted with a facial-recognition feature that ensures the people monitoring his behaviour can be certain he is the person using it.
According to legal filings related to the divorce, White must conduct two Soberlink tests on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays when he is spending time with his daughters. On Saturdays when he has custody, he must take three tests, while on Sundays only one test is required.
The results are automatically sent in real time to designated individuals and, should White test positive, his custodial time with Ezer and Dolores would be ‘terminated’ until such time as the former couple’s lawyers have had an opportunity to meet and thrash out a new arrangement.
In addition, White must attend a minimum of two Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meetings a week, as well as individual therapy sessions at least once a week. Should Timlin, 32, demand proof that he has been going, the actor would have three days to provide it.
Spanish singer Rosalia is Jeremy Allen White’s new girlfriend, following his split from model Ashley Moore and ex-wife Addison Timlin
Not that such onerous conditions appear to be cramping his style. Within three months of the divorce announcement, White was photographed kissing model Ashley Moore, 30, on an LA street. Less than two months later, that relationship was replaced by his current one with Spanish singer-songwriter Rosalia, 31.
Such amorous pursuits are catnip to his starry-eyed fanbase. That red corduroy sofa, on which he throws his sweaty body in the Calvin Klein advert, was made available on Facebook Marketplace and a frenzy of bidding from his admirers is expected.
White, though, plays down the adulation, claiming he does not ‘really pay much attention to it’. He says it is his mother, Eloise Zeigler, who tells him ‘what they are saying on Twitter’.
White was born in 1991 to Eloise and Richard White, both theatre actors, and raised in the now-gentrified Brooklyn neighbourhood of Carroll Gardens. He has a younger sister, Annabelle, who studied cinema, radio and TV.
‘I had a lot of energy and not a lot of focus as a kid,’ White has said. ‘My parents would throw me into anything physical. I did soccer, wrestling, baseball, lacrosse, dance.’
At primary school he trained in ballet, tap and jazz, but says he ‘stumbled’ into acting classes when he was 12. He started getting small roles in films and commercials, before being cast aged 20 as alcoholic Phillip ‘Lip’ Gallagher in the American version of Shameless, a series about a dysfunctional, impoverished family who live on Chicago’s crime-ridden South Side.
White stayed with the show for ten years and, soon afterwards, was cast as the lead in streaming service Hulu’s The Bear. He has said that his ultimate ambition is to follow his parents on to the stage and act on Broadway. To that end, he’s in talks about productions that could start early next year.
As an actor he has been described as ‘continually looking like his dog just died’ and, sure enough, he says he seeks out roles that involve loneliness, adding: ‘I feel very close to it all the time’.
White told GQ that, for him, 2023 had been ‘insane… a lot of high highs, a lot of terribly low lows’.
It’s not entirely clear whether he can expect the same in 2024, but he’ll need to start by investing in some bigger clothes. On stage at Monday night’s Emmys, he suffered a minor wardrobe malfunction when his rippling chest threatened to burst through his straining shirt. Chalk that up as yet another meme moment for the internet’s favourite heartthrob.
