Burnt throws actors into the fire

Master chef Adam Jones (Bradley Cooper) - free of his drug and alcohol habit - is determined to whip up "culinary orgasms".

Remember all that aggression Bradley Cooper had to bottle up playing tightly wound Navy Seal Chris Kyle in American Sniper? It's finally coming out.

In the new movie Burnt, Cooper is master chef Adam Jones. After the subpar opening of his fancy new restaurant (also named Adam Jones), he throws a temper tantrum, hurling plates and expletives before grabbing an employee by the collar, screaming in her face and shoving her.

And it's pretty realistic.

"With all the research we did, we can regale you with hundreds of stories that are much worse than in the movie," Cooper said recently from Los Angeles.

Adds director John Wells: "You'll find a lot of chefs tell you it's not really like that anymore," except then Wells would talk to someone who would say, 'I got hit in the face with a steak that just came off the grill - that's what this burn is over my eye.'"

Burnt, which is in cinemas now, is nothing if not true to life. That makes it an anomaly among cooking movies, which tend to romanticise the craft, pulling heartstrings and inciting hunger pangs in equal measure. You'll see it in Chef, No Reservations, The Hundred-Foot Journey or Chocolat.

Burnt is rougher around the edges. The food looks tasty, but the process of getting it to the table isn't pretty. Sweat and rage go into nearly every dish.

Even before writing the script, Steven Knight began compiling insights from Marcus Wareing, the celebrity chef behind London's Marcus, a restaurant with two Michelin stars - the restaurant equivalent of winning a Golden Globe.

The chef gave Knight some sense of "what makes [chefs] tick - what makes us get out of bed and do a 16-hour day, six days a week, day after day, week after week, plate after plate after plate".

For Cooper's character, it's the desire to whip up "culinary orgasms". Once the enfant terrible of the Paris dining scene, Jones vanished one day without a word. As Burnt opens, it's years later and he has just resurfaced, minus his drug and alcohol habit, to open a London restaurant with the express purpose of getting his third Michelin star.

Doing the script justice was a tall order. For starters, they needed a set that was an actual, functioning kitchen. And once Wells had a kitchen, he needed cooks. So all of the actors got crash courses. Cooper, who said he uses cooking as therapy, shadowed Gordon Ramsay.

When the audience sees a red-faced Sienna Miller hunched over an open flame, she is in fact cooking fish on a 120-degree stove. And the extras were real chefs from Michelin-rated restaurants. Cuts and burns were routine.

"That was real sweat," Cooper said. "My eyes really were bloodshot."

According to Wells, the cast produced as many as 120 Michelin-calibre meals a day. (The cast and crew were very well fed.)

During one of the final scenes, Cooper's character has to transform a plate of pureed beets and lamb into an edible work of art. The chef showed the actor how and then let Cooper have a go.

To Wareing's chagrin, the actor pulled it off on the first try. Cooper looked at Wareing and asked, "What's wrong?" "And I said, 'Nothing. It's ****ing perfect,"' Wareing recalled. "I said, 'You're pissing me off now because it took me years to get to this stage'." The lessons went both ways.

"John never raised his voice once when he was directing," Wareing said. "He got what he wanted, and he never raised his voice." Wareing said he now speaks to his brigade a little differently. And how's that working out?

"It works just as well," he said.