Los Angeles, California – Reported by Kelly Carter for Elite Traveler, the private jet lifestyle magazine
ITALIAN BLOOD No one could be more pleased that the HBO hit True Blood is gaining popularity in Italy than Joe Manganiello, who plays the hot werewolf Alcide Herveaux, since it affords him the opportunity to travel the country while promoting the show. “[Italy]is the only place other than the States I could live,” says Manganiello. “It’s the Roman Empire, Michelangelo, Versace. It’s my heritage.” His family hails from southern Italy, though the 6-foot-5 heartthrob admits, “I’m very tall for a Sicilian… It’s interesting when I’m over there because with the hair, people come up to me and start talking to me in Italian because I look like them. I’m learning. I have the Rosetta Stone [software] at home. I have to. I want to live there someday. My joke is I don’t speak the language but I eat the food.”
CHANGING LANES Modern Family’s Ty Burrell, an Emmy winner, has adapted his traveling habits since he and his wife Holly adopted daughter Frances. “We used to travel a lot,” says Burrell, who has visited Paris, Italy, Morocco, London, Canada and other international destinations with Holly. The family now often goes to Utah, where they have a home. Showing the humor he displays on his award-winning show, Burrell says of his daughter, “Her problem is not that she hates flying; it’s that she loves flying. So she’s everywhere. She loves it so much that she’s [with] the people in front of us [on the airplane], the people behind us, she’s in the aisle.” Next winter they plan to put their little one on the slopes. “I’m excited about that,” Burrell says. “She’s super courageous and crazy bold. She’ll be a better skier than all of us.”
SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE Rex Lee, best known for playing Ari Gold’s assistant Lloyd Lee on Entourage, never expected to travel to India. But that’s exactly where he found himself for a week after accepting a friend’s wedding invitation. “When people would talk about going to India for spiritual reasons, that talk made me dream about visiting but I never thought I would ever have the opportunity to go,” says Lee, who now can be seen on the ABC sitcom Suburgatory. “And then I went. It was amazing. I really thought about my spirituality and my place in the world. The interesting thing about India is the wealthy and the poor live mixed [in] with each other. It’s a very beautiful society where they live in the caste system, but they believe in reincarnation. I don’t think the wealthy look down on the poor so much because they’re like, ‘Oh, they’re going to be the wealthy in their next life.’ It’s really interesting.”