You may only know her from the glamorous world of the silver screen but this gal has untapped talents in the culinary realm that would knock your socks off! For starters (no pun intended) she’s been slaving over a hot stove since she was nineteen and a friend said, “Strawberries are in season! Let’s make jam!” A smarter cookie would have run for the hills but not Renee. Wine glass in hand, she took to the task like a fish to water and has had the cooking bug ever since. It wasn’t until financial necessity took over a few years later that she found herself knee deep in cobble crust and croissants in an upscale local eatery, and realized she had a professional knack for all things pastry.

A year later she took a part time gig at the noted Broadway Deli in Santa Monica, California and honed her skills in mass volume 3 days a week by making and stocking the gigantor dessert case that serviced sit down and take-out patrons alike. At this same time her real break came in the form of an apprenticeship at Wolfgang Puck’s famed restaurant Granite. There she learned the finer points of dessert preparation and plating under the watchful eye of pastry chef Karen Anam until the historic LA earthquake of ’94. For five days afterwards not a single a gas oven could be turned on in the coastal empire, during which time the management downsized the kitchen staff and with it her coveted job.

This supposed tragedy turned out to be the perfect boot in the rear she needed to get her career in food cooking. She enrolled in the California Culinary Academy and relocated to San Francisco where she spent over a year happily entrenched in flour and sugar and all their scientific properties. After graduating with honors she moved to New York and while studying and performing in some of the oddest experimental theater never to be seen, worked in the pastry/ bakery for Arizona 206 and Arizona Café. Here she also learned the finer details of catering private and business parties, “Keep the red wine away from the Chippendale’s and mind the edge of the frame on the Picasso when setting up the buffet.”

The prodigal daughter eventually returned home to LA and new opportunities to cater to the Hollywood and Hollywierd crowd. But in the past few years her greatest joy has come from being personally chosen to plan and put together special family events. And whether it’s an intimate dinner for six or a Christmas buffet for thirty, it’s been a welcome challenge to her.

Adding to Renee’s bragging rights, she has also had the distinguished honor of having one of her finest recipes published in Bon Appetit. This same little recipe went on to catch the publisher’s attention at Houghton Mifflin and was included in “The Best American Recipes 2003-2005, The Year’s Top Picks from Books, Magazines, Newspapers, and the Internet”.

Yes, her background may be primarily in Pastry and Baking but don’t worry. If it’s an elaborate confit with foie gras sauce you want she’ll simply do her homework or ask her hunky Chef husband, Jason Federico to help out. He’s a wonderful source of classic cooking information and always happy to serve…professionally of course.

True, acting is her first love and so cooking and entertaining have become extensions of that passion for creativity. Her philosophy towards food, sweet and savory is the same, “A great meal should be an awakening for the senses, a fun filled event of flavors and giddy childhood anticipation. Be warned: uptight, stodgy dinning need not darken my doorway.”

For many years she has worked as a professional actor and lived in New York, San Francisco and most recently, L.A. Currently she is enjoying the seventh season on the critically acclaimed series “The West Wing” for NBC as the recurring character of Nancy. Recently she also guest starred on the long running military series “JAG” for CBS and played the lead in the independent feature film “Mercy of the Sea”. Shot entirely on location in Croatia, “Mercy” is a deeply moving film about one woman’s struggle to bring peace to her shattered life after the war.

“Long before I began acting I watched from the sidelines as my father, Martin Sheen built his own distinguished career. Thanks to my father’s strong sense of family, and minor regard for formal education, I enjoyed an unusual and colorful childhood wherever his work took him. Movie sets may have been my playgrounds but the big cities of the world were my classrooms.” says Renee, “What I lacked in American history, I more than made up for in my knowledge of Leonardo DaVinci and the Vatican City relics. While my father filmed ‘Apocalypse Now’ and the kids my age back home were learning their times tables, I was busy swimming in the rivers of the Philippines with children who belonged to a tribe that was still living much as they had a thousand years ago. These are only a few of the memories that will live with me forever.”

Along with acting she peruses her interest in the culinary arts and enjoys traveling for both work and pleasure. She has had the fortune of working in N.Y., L.A. and nearly every state in between. And whether it’s a visit to her beloved Aunt Carmen in Madrid, Spain or a sentimental journey to Borriskane, Ireland, the birth place of her grandmother or to the walled city of Dubrovnik in Croatia, her suitcase seems always curiously packed and ready to go.

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