Wolfgang Puck said he has lived with a fear of failure from a young age.- In a new documentary, he said that he contemplated
suicide as a 14-year-old. - The restaurateur says he still gets nervous each time he opens a new eatery and worries that no one will show up.
In a new documentary, legendary chef Wolfgang Puck opened up about his
"Life with my stepfather was really rough," Puck, who grew up in Austria, said in the documentary. "He terrorized us."
Puck said his stepfather called him "lazy" and said he was "good for nothing," and when the young aspiring chef said he wanted to work in a kitchen, the man told him he would fail.
Cooking with his mother and grandmother became Puck's escape from his stepfather. When he finished schooling at 14 years old, his mother found him a job at a hotel as a cook's apprentice. "I was so excited," the chef said. "But my stepfather said, 'Oh, you're gonna be back in one month and you're never gonna be anything. If you are a real man, stay out of the kitchen.'"
According to the now Michelin-starred chef, those words motivated him to prove his stepfather wrong. He took the apprenticeship and worked in a kitchen peeling potatoes every day. But Puck wasn't confident, and he told Insider in an interview about the documentary that he is still filled with fear from time to time.
"I was so nervous that I was gonna screw up and have to go home," Puck said about his first kitchen job. In the middle of lunch service one day, the kitchen ran out of mashed potatoes. He recalled the chef telling him he "was good for nothing," and that the chef didn't know why they hired the teen. Puck was fired on the spot.
He then went on to detail what happened next.
"In my head, I said, 'I cannot go home,'" he explained. "The last thing I want to have is my stepfather say, 'Yeah I told you so, you're back now.'"
He continued: "By that time it was almost dark. I walked to the bridge over the Dürre Ager river and I stood up there, looking down at the really dark river and thinking, 'At home, I get this negativity. This feeling that I'm good for nothing. Now it happened again. Maybe I am good for nothing. Maybe I shouldn't be here. Maybe that's the solution.' So I stood there for about an hour, and then all of a sudden I decided I don't want to give up. I'm gonna go back tomorrow and see what happens."
The 14-year-old returned to the hotel the next day and refused to leave until he was given another chance.
He told Insider that it was the fear of failure that had driven him to go back, but that it also followed him into his adult life.
Puck said in the interview that he first came to the US as a tourist and had no green card, so he "freaked out" each time he saw the police. He also had dreams that Immigration Services would come to his home and take him back to Austria.
Puck said he was afraid to open his first restaurant, Spago, and that he's "still always nervous" and gets bouts of imposter syndrome when opening restaurants today.
The celebrity chef and restaurateur told Insider that he channels his constant fear of failure into motivation.
"I think fear of failure is maybe a good thing," he said. "It's not a good thing when you wake up in the middle of the night sweating, but I think it makes you work harder or it makes you look at things and say I'm gonna do the best I can."
"Wolfgang" is available to stream on Disney+.