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Anthony Bourdain, Celebrity Chef Turned Comic Creator, Has Died Aged 61

Published Fri, 08 Jun 2018 07:34:19 -0500

Last updated Fri, 08 Jun 2018 11:15:14 -0500

US celebrity chef and television personality Anthony Bourdain has been found dead in his hotel room, aged 61. CNN, for whom Bourdain was working at the time, has reported it as a confirmed suicide.

CNN's Jake Tapper has since tweeted:

This is so awful.

Anthony Bourdain, 61, has died. He took his own life.

He was in France working on an upcoming episode of his award-winning CNN series. His close friend Eric Ripert, the French chef, found Bourdain unresponsive in his hotel room Friday morning.

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) June 8, 2018

His fame was as a result of his book Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, which talked about his own copious drugs use while working as an haute cuisine chef. Two years later, he was making A Cook's Tour for the Food Network and won Emmys for Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations for the Travel Channel. His show Parts Unknown began on CNN in 2013 and is now in its 11th season.

He also became a comic book writer, first for DC Vertigo with two Get Jiro graphic novels, and recently followed its editor-in-chief, Karen Berger, to her new imprint Berger Books at Dark Horse Comics for the series Hungry Ghosts.

On Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, he told Jimmy that before becoming a chef, he wanted to be an underground cartoonist. He described himself as a comic book collector and a self-described "comic book nerd." But he sold his sizeable collection in the '80s to buy drugs.

He is survived by his daughter, Ariane Bourdain, born in 2007 to his then-wife Ottavia Busia.