“It’s a funny sensation when you meet someone and everyone else just fades away into the background,” says actress Victoria Summer. But that’s what happened when she saw Italian Michelin star chef Fabrizio Vaccaro for the first time.
“We met by chance in a coffee shop in East Grinstead,” reveals Victoria, who played Julie Andrews in Saving Mr Banks opposite Tom Hanks. “I was meeting a girlfriend for a coffee when we bumped into Fabrizio. He gave her a big hug, she introduced me and I just knew he was special.”
Fabrizio was on the way back to Rome from a holiday in Florida and his flight was cancelled so he’d made an unscheduled UK stopover – a trip that changed both their lives forever.
“I knew I would see him again that weekend, and we went on a few dates. Fabrizio had been working in London, but he hadn’t seen a lot of England, so I suggested I show him around Berkshire,” says Victoria. “After being in Los Angeles for 10 years, I was back home.”
At the end of last year, Victoria’s father became sick, so she had returned to Berkshire, where she was born in Reading and grew up in Wokingham. She had then extended her stay to refurbish her father’s house.
“I was born in the Royal Berkshire Hospital, just like Kate Middleton and Kate Winslet, two of my role models,” she says. “Berkshire is a massive part of who I am and it’s one of the best places to be in the world. I grew up surrounded by countryside, with Ascot Racecouse on my doorstep and all the style and elegance that came with it.
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