News & Articles Interview with Christopher Heard, Celebrity Biographer-Interviewer

Source: Luxury Travel Magazine

By Christine Gray



 









Luxury Travel Magazine interview with celebrity biographer and interviewer, Christopher Heard, who will be publishing a book entitled "The Suite Life - The Magic and Mystery of Hotel Living" about why A-List celebrities gravitate towards hotel life.



You've been a celebrity biographer, so how did it come about that you wrote a book about Hotels?

Throughout my career as a celebrity biographer and interviewer on television I had the occasion to be in many fantastic hotels the world over talking to movie stars and many of them were hotel residents themselves, so in a very real way the research and writing of the book is fifteen years in the making.

It has been a lifelong dream of mine to live the life of an author in a big old hotel – and for the last couple of years I have been doing exactly that. It was while living at The Fairmont Royal York in Toronto that I finally and most appropriately got to write the book I have always wanted to write The Suite Life – The Magic and Mystery of Hotel Living (my previous eight books were biographies of movie stars and filmmakers).

Why did you choose to focus on The Fairmont Royal York hotel in Toronto?

In Toronto, when looking for a location to shoot and interview, I was invariably set up in The Fairmont Royal York because of my level of comfort there and how extraordinarily good the staff are at helping to organize such things.

I live and have had a lifelong professional and personal relationship with the magnificent Fairmont Royal York in Toronto. It seems that I have always felt drawn to the Royal York, always felt very comfortable here – it wasn't until later in life that I found out this pull was almost cosmic in nature as I was literally conceived in this very hotel. So when the harmonic convergence of events saw to it that I could not only live my dream of living in a big old hotel, but double the dream by writing a book about hotel living and hotel culture, there was no other hotel I could have possibly imagined doing it in but the Fairmont Royal York, one of the greatest of the classic hotels in the world.

What celebrities did you interview for this book?

Part of what I wanted to explore with the book was why, down through the eras, writers and artists and musicians gravitated towards hotel life, to do that I spoke with a number of high profile people who themselves were also long term hotel residents.

One such interview involved action star Jackie Chan. Chan was shooting his film The Tuxedo in the Royal York Hotel so I spent an afternoon with him in a suite – our conversation involved my asking him to demonstrate how he choreographs his fight scenes and I volunteered myself as his opponent in the demonstration. It went well for a few minutes then I took a wrong step forward at the wrong time and was on the receiving end of a solid punch to the head. Jackie Chan was very upset as was his assistant and the film company liaison but I kept assuring them that I was delighted – who else could boast of being slugged by Jackie Chan during an interview? It was a unique moment, but one a many hundreds of thousands of them that have unfolded within these walls.

Warren Beatty, who lived in the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Los Angeles for ten years, told me that he liked the order and neatness and lack of clutter of hotels and also liked the fact that when inside the hotel his privacy was not just protected but respected as well.

Both Johnny Depp  and Keanu Reeves  lived in the notorious Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood, Depp for four years, Keanu on and off for more than sixteen years (Reeves has never owned a private residence in Los Angeles). Johnny Depp, who I have written two previous books on, loved the convenience of hotel living and told me he loved the big old Chateau Marmont because it felt like he was living in a big house belonging to a relative. Keanu Reeves echoed the sentiment when telling me that because he is on location so often that he is really only comfortable living in hotels, the rhythm of hotel living is all he knows and he referred to the Chateau Marmont as "an old friend."


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The life inside luxury hotels? Secret of celebrities? Nobody can refuse the attractiveness of knowing a celebrity’s life in those top-end hotels. Christopher Heard – a celebrity biographer & interviewer, shares his ultimate experience with celebrities who stay in The Fairmont Royal York in Toronto, Canada. In his book called The Suit Life – The Magic and Mystery of Hotel Living, he writes about his exclusive interview with many stars from Jackie Chan, Warren Beatty to Johnny Depp, Keanu Reeves and their very own thought and experience of hotel living. The book is also about the reason why Fairmont Royal York is always chosen by Heard himself and the celebrities. It’s a perfect treat for the curious heads who want to have a sneak peek into the most luxurious life of high profile celebrities in The Fairmont Royal York.