"I’m going to pretty much die in the saddle," Anthony Bourdain eerily predicted his death 4 months ago
No one would have fathomed four months ago that celebrated travel writer Anthony Bourdain would take his own life. In an interview with People, the chef, who took his life in a hotel room in France on Friday, talked about death but also about how he was “happy in ways I didn’t think I ever would be.”
“I’m going to pretty much die in the saddle,” he told People magazine in February while he was shooting for “Parts Unknown”.
The late 61-year-old TV show host and chef said he was out on the roads for about 250 days in a year, but was far from planning to retire from globe-trotting anytime soon.
"I gave up on that. I’ve tried. I just think I’m just too nervous, neurotic, driven.” He said. “I would have deluded myself into thinking that I’d be happy in a hammock or gardening. But no, I’m quite sure I can’t.”
Despite his busy schedule, he made sure of taking out five days a month to spend with his 11-year-old daughter Ariane, who lives with his ex-wife Ottavia Busai in Manhattan.
Commenting on the same, he said, “I’ll go back, see my daughter, unpack, repack, mimic a normal life, which is extraordinarily pleasurable to me.”
Bourdain admits that the birth of his only child made him feel a bit responsible. Or at least he tries to be so.
“I was, frankly asking for trouble. It was a daredevil move,” he said. “In retrospect, I don’t know that I would do that today, now that I’m a dad or reasonably happy.”
He described himself to People as being “happy in ways that I have not been in memory” and “happy in ways I didn’t think I ever would be, for sure.”
He credited girlfriend, Asia Argento, with his contentment. The couple met in 2016 when the Italian actress appeared in the eighth season of “Parts Unknown”.
Bourdain also admitted he was once addicted to heroin and cocaine and was drinking too much in his final years working in the restaurant industry.
“It’s never been an addiction for me,” he said about alcohol. “I’ve abused alcohol, for sure, but I’ve never felt a compulsion to … cigarettes, obviously, that’s an addiction.”
Anthony Bourdain changed the way we see the world. Bourdain, who graduated from the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, NY, and worked at Les Halles in Kips Bay, was by most accounts an unremarkable talent in the kitchen. But he had an immense gift for writing about food and sharing his enthusiasm for it.