Lifestyle

Gwyneth Paltrow spawns new breed of domestic experts

Looking to lead “a very one-of-a-kind, curated life”? Fear not — Blake Lively will soon show you the way.

Yes, the lovely Lively, until now best known for playing a buxom socialite on a CW series and marrying Ryan Reynolds, announced in the September issue of Vogue UK that she would soon be sashaying into the lifestyle realm with the launch of a new business.

“There’s nothing like it out there,” Lively cooed.

Blake Lively, with her Bedford Hills neighbor Martha Stewart at a 2011 gala, wants to launch a lifestyle brand just like her pal.WireImage

Actually, there’s already plenty like it out there.

More and more actresses are setting their oven timers to prolong their 15 minutes of fame, broadcasting their love of cooking and the domestic sphere to the world in a bid to stay in the spotlight. Apparently, all you need to write a cookbook is a pretty face, a role in a mediocre film or television series and a cute story about a kitchen disaster and/or passionate conviction to share in the introduction.

Just last month, Ali Larter released “Kitchen Revelry: A Year of Festive Menus From My Home to Yours.” Next week, Haylie Duff’s “The Real Girl’s Kitchen” hits the shelves. In 2012, Jessica Alba launched the Honest Company, a line of natural cleaning products and baby goods. Earlier this year, she published “The Honest Life: Living Naturally and True to You.” And then there’s Alicia Silverstone, who released “The Kind Diet: A Simple Guide To Feeling Great, Losing Weight, and Saving the Planet” in 2009; next April, she’s set to release “The Kind Mama: A Simple Guide to Supercharged Fertility, a Radiant Pregnancy, a Sweeter Birth, and a Healthier, More Beautiful Beginning.”

Gwyneth Paltrow signs her best-selling cookbook in East Hampton this summer.Scott Roth/WireImage

There’s enough on bookshelves to make you wonder just what Gwyneth Paltrow has wrought. Since launching Goop, her earnestly luxurious lifestyle Web site, in 2008, Paltrow’s spawned a mini-empire. Goop now has an exclusive clothing line, its own city-guide apps, and has helped promote juice cleanses and gluten hysteria, while Paltrow has published three cookbooks of her own and one with Mario Batali. Worst of all, her success has seemed to inspire a number of other actresses to follow in her Loeffler ankle boots.

“It’s a trend that’s happening,” says Cory Isaacson, a partner at marketing agency Walton Isaacson. “These celebrities, they’re brands themselves, and they realize that there are so many people out there in the world clamoring for more popculture information.”

In other words, why not put out a cookbook or launch a lifestyle Web site to satisfy fans’ hunger to know more about you — or remind them that you’re still relevant?

And, compared to designing a clothing line or launching a restaurant chain, “developing a cookbook for some of these celebrities is such an easy thing to do,” says Isaacson, who worked on the push behind Bethenny Frankel’s Skinny Girl cocktails. “It’s low-hanging fruit.”

The lifestyle guru life has certainly turned out well for Gwynnie: Goop has a reported 150,000 subscribers and her last cookbook, “It’s All Good,” debuted at No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list and has sold more than 150,000 copies to date, according to Nielsen BookScan. Alba’s book, which came out around the same time, also made it onto the bestseller list but hasn’t seen quite as spectacular sales; it’s sold 36,000 copies to date.

There’s something both sad and irksome about all of these actresses marketing themselves as lifestyle gurus. Who are they to advise readers on charcuterie platters and kale salads? (Duff devotes an entire chapter, “I ❤ Kale,” to the hearty green.)

And while Paltrow has her Oscar and a laundry list of well-reviewed turns in respected films, the majority of these wannabe domestic goddesses hardly have thriving acting careers.

On her book’s jacket notes, Larter is described as a “busy actress, well known for her roles on the NBC show ‘Heroes’ and movies such as ‘Varsity Blues’ and ‘Legally Blonde.’ ” It should be noted that “Heroes” had its last season in 2010, while the movies mentioned are from 1999 and 2001, respectively.

Meanwhile, the only title mentioned on “actress and singer/songwriter” Haylie Duff’s book jacket is 2004’s “Napoleon Dynamite.” Alba’s last major role was 2011’s “Spy Kids: All the Time in the World in 4D,” and Silverstone remains etched in most people’s minds as that girl from “Clueless” and the Aerosmith video.

The earth mother: “That night we grilled the final steak in our freezer and sat down to our last nonvegan supper. It was quite solemn…I wasn’t sure I would ever eat a yummy meal again.”Dimitrios Kambouris/WireImage

Considering the current state of these actresses’ film and television careers, these books read like strange bids for attention — with artfully lit portraits of them shaking up a vinaigrette or picking a citrus tree — rather than earnest efforts to share their culinary knowledge. Larter and Duff seem to be trying to play the role of cookbook writer, but their performances aren’t quite believable. They write of fanciful celebrations, cliché female-bonding over cheese plates, diets and cleanses, but their stories are so nauseatingly precious, you find yourself missing the relative down-toearth believability of Ina Garten or Martha Stewart.

Larter tells us to celebrate the full moon with a “nighttime walk in the brisk air while sipping hot chocolate.” Or “reconnect with friends while capturing the last bounty of the [summer]” by getting together to make strawberry-rhubarb jam and balsamic fig chutney.

Duff leads off a recipe for burrata and sun-dried tomatoes by talking about her regular girls’ nights. “On the night I made this burrata appetizer, the group got particularly rowdy,” she writes. “Almost immediately, the dirty talk commenced, and we started sharing stories of our latest sexcapades.” How naughty! Were carbs also involved?

The recipes themselves read more as vague instructions for how to assemble halfa- dozen ingredients, as with Duff’s recipe for a bagel and lox with jalapeno cream cheese — it’s just as hard as it sounds.

The simplicity, especially in Duff’s book, reaches levels of condescension. After advising the reader to boil asparagus tips for one minute before plunging them in ice water, she explains in a parenthetical that “this is called blanching.” Oh, really!

The simple sister: “One time, I caught a mitt on fire as I stirred a soup, and instead of running over to the sink, I stuck my hand into the bubbling pot.”Paul Archuleta/FilmMagic

Actresses aren’t the only ones using cookbooks to cling to their 15 minutes. Last month, Kate Gosselin released her “Love Is in the Mix” cookbook, filled with recipes approved by her brood and made with name-brand ingredients that suggest convenient partnerships. Real Housewife of New Jersey Teresa Giudice has released four cookbooks, despite not seeming to know how to pronounce the word “cumin” correctly. Lo Bosworth, a side character on MTV’s “The Hills,” has her own cooking blog and has expressed interest in putting out a cookbook.

The proliferation of celeb cookbooks isn’t just about these ladies getting attention and advances. The publishing industry is also desperate to make the morning shows.

“As an agent, I want any cookbook that’s going to get attention,” says Steve Troha of publishing house Folio, which works with a number of cookbook authors.

He notes that many of these books can be a step up production-wise and can sell quite well.

“They can be good, if they have a great recipe developer and recipe testers,” he says. And, he adds, celeb cookbooks usually look as slick as the latest guru they’re pitching. “They can afford better photographers.”

When Lively’s new venture debuts, one can only assume that the business, and the woman behind it, who is also the face of Gucci’s “Premiere” fragrance, will look amazing. And hopefully Lively, who did a stint at Le Cordon Bleu in 2010 and has been palling around Westchester with Martha Stewart, will exhibit more expertise and likability than some of her peers.

But no matter what her prowess is in the kitchen, we’d advise her not to quit her day job.