Valerie Bertinelli's Transformation Is Seriously Turning Heads

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Valerie Bertinelli has played many leading roles in her lifetime: award-winning television actress, teenage celebrity, rock star wife, and culinary host, to name just a few. Along the way, she's had plenty of highs (marriage, the birth of her child, a successful career change) and some notable lows (divorce and body image struggles amongst them). All told, Bertinelli has acquired enough stories to fill a book — or three, to be exact. Some of these stories are well known, but many are not and could be pretty surprising. 

Any way you choose to look at her story, the truth is that Valerie Bertinelli is a very different person today than who she was back in the 1970s. So how did she go from winning awards as a beloved teenage actress to whipping up trays of lasagna as host of her own Food Network show? Let's take a look at how Valerie Bertinelli's transformation is seriously turning heads.

Valerie Bertinelli's parents had four sons, but Valerie herself has only known three of them. According to People, when Bertinelli's mother was still pregnant with her, her brother Mark died suddenly. He was just 17 months old. "When I came into the world, my mom was grieving," she told People. "He died in the most horrible way. They were visiting a friends' farm and he wandered off unsupervised and drank poison out of a bottle that wasn't supposed to have poison in it. It was a soda pop bottle."

Bertinelli, however, didn't learn about her brother's death until she was a teenager. "The subject was too painful. My parents kept the tragedy locked inside," she recalled. While keeping it a secret may have been hard to understand at the time, Bertinelli learned to appreciate the way her parents handled the trauma years later when she became a mother herself. 

"I was holding [my son] Wolfie who was 17 months old and thinking how did my mom survive?" Bertinelli said. "She had to keep going and I learned that from her. She had to carry on. She had a very hard life. She always tried to make the best of everything."

After moving to southern California, Valerie Bertinelli befriended a neighborhood girl who just so happened to be the daughter of a television producer. She was quickly inspired to enroll in acting classes at the Tami Lynn School of Artists. The program helped Bertinelli land her first acting job, appearing in an episode of the television show "Apple's Way" in 1974. Although it was a small role, it was enough to catch the eye of famed television producer Norman Lear, who encouraged her to audition for a new show he was working on called "One Day at a Time." Bertinelli tried out, got the job, and her life was never the same.

"One Day at a Time" premiered in 1975, when Bertinelli was just 15 years old (via Good Housekeeping). The show, a comedy about a divorced mother raising her family, was an immediate hit. Bertinelli's role as witty Barbara Cooper earned her two Golden Globe awards and launched her to stardom. In 2001, more than a decade and a half after "One Day at a Time" ended its nine-season run in 1984, Bertinelli proved her staying power by landing another starring role on a hit show, this time on "Touched by an Angel." She would appear in nearly 50 episodes before the drama wrapped up in 2003.

Valerie Bertinelli's marriage to Eddie Van Halen was a match made in tabloid heaven, but things were not as picture-perfect as they may have seemed. Bertinelli had trouble keeping up with her husband's rocker lifestyle and the couple grew apart. "He had his responsibilities of what he had to do, and I had my responsibilities," she told Oprah. "And we thought if you just live in the same house there would be a connection, but no."

The distance led both Bertinelli and Van Halen to become unfaithful in their marriage. Still, the couple, who had a son together, remained married for 20 years. It was with their child in mind that they ultimately chose to divorce. "One of the many reasons that Ed and I split up is to give Wolfie a better vision of what two people who are supposedly in love treat each other like," Bertinelli said. "Ed and I weren't treating each other like two people that loved each other, and that's what Wolfie was seeing." After divorcing in 2007, the couple remained close until Van Halen's death in 2020.

After making her weight battle public, Valerie Bertinelli got a call from diet company Jenny Craig. Not only did they want her to use their program, but they also offered Bertinelli a spokesperson job. So, in 2007, she went to work, both on her diet and for Jenny Craig (via TODAY). Over the next two years, the actress dropped roughly 50 pounds. She celebrated the accomplishment by posing in a bikini for the cover of People. Bertinelli hadn't worn a bikini since she was 20. "I thought, If I'm so afraid of a bikini, there's something wrong. And so I had to get back into one!" she said.

Bertinelli worked for Jenny Craig for six years, but she now admits it's not something she's particularly proud of. This past summer, Bertinelli shared a tearful response to being body-shamed. In return, one commentator brought the former spokesperson's past into question, writing, "You spent decades telling the rest of us to get thin, shilled weight loss shakes, potions & snake oil & NOW wanna be a body shaming warrior?" 

While pointing out she was simply venting and not claiming to be a victim, Bertinelli acknowledged the error of her ways (via Yahoo). "Yes, I spent 6 years 'shilling' for Jenny Craig... I have been buying into the diet industry my whole life and then I became part of the problem, so here I am today receiving the karma of my actions."

Valerie Bertinelli has been working professionally for nearly half a century, plenty of time to accumulate a trophy case full of awards – precisely what she's done. It started in 1981 when she won the first of two consecutive Golden Globes for her work on "One Day at a Time." The show also earned Bertinelli a Young Artist Award nomination in 1981. More recently, the star's acting chops were recognized with a Screen Actors Guild nomination in 2011 for the show "Hot in Cleveland."

It's not just her acting work that's garnered her awards, however. Bertinelli's hosting skills have earned critical acclaim, too. In 2019, she won two Daytime Emmy awards, for Outstanding Culinary Host and Outstanding Culinary Program, for hosting and producing "Valerie's Home Cooking." The show earned her four other Daytime Emmy nominations.

Bertinelli scored another major honor in 2012 when she was immortalized with her own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. "Valerie is one of Hollywood's most popular and loved television actresses and we are proud to honor her with a star on the Walk of Fame," said Leron Gubler, President and CEO of the Hollywood Chamber. Bertinelli's "Hot in Cleveland" co-stars, including Betty White, spoke at the unveiling ceremony.

Valerie Bertinelli gave birth to her son, Wolfgang, in March of 1991. To say he was destined to be a musician would be an understatement. Not only was his father Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Eddie Van Halen, but he was also named after composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (via iHeart). According to iHeart, he learned how to play the drums by age nine. Not long after, he began playing guitar and bass. 

At the ripe old age of 15, according to NPR, he joined Van Halen on tour playing bass. "It was fun. I didn't have to go to 11th grade," he said. "It felt more like a family trip. You know, I was just there to support my father. And to be able to be on stage and play music with my uncle and my father every night, it was truly a blessing." Wolfgang has been playing music ever since and just released a solo album in 2021.

Wolfgang's biggest fan, of course, is his mother, whose Instagram handle is @wolfiesmom. As Bertinelli's only biological child (she has four stepchildren, according to AARP), the pair are incredibly close. When asked last year by TODAY what Wolfgang means to her, the television star tearfully responded, "That I know how to do something right."