Gordon Ramsay was born on November 8, 1966, in Johnstone, Scotland, and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. A promising teenage footballer who trained with Glasgow Rangers, a serious knee injury ended his athletic ambitions and redirected him toward cooking. In 1998, he opened Restaurant Gordon Ramsay in Chelsea, which reached three Michelin stars by 2001, a distinction it still holds today.

His television career launched in 1999 with the British documentary Boiling Point, followed by Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares (Channel 4, 2004), Hell’s Kitchen (ITV, 2004), and The F Word (Channel 4, 2005). From 2005 onward, he made the jump to American television, where his Fox shows, including Hell’s Kitchen, Kitchen Nightmares, MasterChef, MasterChef Junior, and Next Level Chef,  established him as a dominant force in reality TV. 

Ramsay married Cayetana “Tana” Elizabeth Hutcheson in December 1996; the couple has six children and divides their time between London and Los Angeles. In 2014, they established the Gordon and Tana Ramsay Foundation to support Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity.