Saturday with Stanley Tucci: 'I work out six days a week but I don’t jog'

Multi-award-winning actor Stanley Tucci is best known for his roles in films such as Prizzi’s Honour, The Devil Wears Prada, The Lovely Bones and The Hunger Games.

Stanley Tucci photographed at The Sidecar bar in The Westbury in Dublin.

8.00

The time I wake up depends on whether the children let us sleep in or not. The first thing I do is have a glass of orange juice, then a double espresso and make the kids breakfast.

We prefer breakfast at home to going out for brunch. I don’t really like brunch — it’s kind of an in-between thing. I’d rather have a light breakfast like porridge or something, then a nice lunch and a proper dinner.

Friday night is usually pizza night in our house. We usually prepare the dough ourselves or we buy it from a guy whose dough is beautiful. 

If there is dough left over from the night before (we usually save some) we make ‘pitti fritti’ for breakfast — you take the dough and put it in a small amount of olive oil/vegetable oil mix, you stretch it and fry it till it’s golden, dry it on kitchen towel and dip it into sugar or you can fry it and eat it with eggs. 

After breakfast we do some yoga with the kids — Saturday is a day for exercise. Then we bounce around the house for a bit.

11.00

We take the kids to the farmers’ market which is within walking distance of our house in London. 

We have a look around to see if there’s anything there that we’d like to eat for dinner later. 

We get the kids sausage baps — their favourite thing to eat at the market. We might take them to the park and play a little bit of football or do whatever depending on the season.

I work out six days a week but I don’t jog. I do floor pilates, yoga, weights, body weight exercises and TRX — all with Monique Eastwood. 

I do a combination of all those things and we change it up every day. The kids are very active but they don’t have matches yet on Saturdays, so we get to hang out. 

I travel a lot, and my wife is really busy and works really hard, so we look forward to spending weekends at home. 

After the market we’ll usually come home and start cooking.

13.00

We might have friends over, and if we do, we might do a lunch, and then we’ll just have a light dinner later on in the evening. 

I’m not really a planner — my wife [Felicity Blunt] is much better at that.

15.00

Sometimes we’ll go somewhere like the park but because the kids are so active during the week we’ll often just stay home.

There’s a tennis place beside us so we might play tennis, we’ve a little football goal in the back garden so they’ll kick the football or jump on the trampoline — the same as any kids.

If it’s Spring or early Summer we might go out and plant something in the garden or we’ll barbecue something — we just do whatever.

I’m doing more episodes of my show in Italy — that crosses over weekends so that’s really hard. 

When I’m shooting a film I try to ask the production to condense my work so I can get it done in a week or two, and if they can’t condense it (because I’m not the lead — usually they can request these things) and it’s over an eight week period or something, I will fly home on the weekends if I can, as most productions shoot Monday to Friday.

19.00

If we are having friends over for dinner, we will start preparing the food earlier in the day and then they’ll come over and we’ll have a nice big dinner. 

It could be risotto or some kind of pasta, it could be steak or a roast. It’s not a struggle to get good seasonal ingredients in England but I have noticed that things have changed since Brexit, things have definitely become more expensive.

21.00

If I’m having a cocktail then my favourite is a martini made with Tanqueray, of course. There are a lot of cocktail bars throughout the world that I love but my favourite is the Connaught Bar in London.

I grew up with a family that drank cocktails — my father’s family in particular. And then they faded away — during the 70s and 80s people weren’t so interested in cocktails. 

Now bartenders have become like celebrities and people are really interested in mixology and I think that’s great. 

Bars just became a place where people went to get booze — they lost the elegance of the 30s, 40s, 50s, and early 60s. 

Now that elegance is back– look at The Sidecar at The Westbury. It’s so beautiful — it harkens back to the 1930s but it is it’s own thing too.

There’s an emphasis on the local when it comes to cocktails trends too — we were down in Dingle last year and they have their own gin. 

Of course now with global warming you’re going to start seeing vineyards too.

• Stanley Tucci recently visited Ireland to mark the launch of Tanqueray No TEN’s celebration of cocktail artistry with a visit to three of the Irish cocktail industry’s most esteemed tastemakers: Oisin Kelly of The Sidecar at The Westbury Hotel; Adeline Valdivia of Glovebox at Allta; and Andy Ferreria of Cask Cork.
• tanqueray.com/en-gb