As long as you spent any part of the ’90s in front of a television, you know who Ricki Lake is. Few outsiders pull off personal evolution in four decades —teen movie star 80s to daytime talk show titan 90s to documentary filmmaker (recently, an unfiltered voice on aging and health and one-woman reinvention). What makes her career really interesting isn’t just how long she’s lasted — it’s how evolved she’s been willing to let the public watch.
From Hairspray to Household Name
In the case of Ricki Lake, her story does not start on the couch, it starts in the theater. ricki lake Receiving the role of Tracy Turnblad in John Waters’ classic 1988 original “Hairspray” immediately made her a cult star and paved the way for basically every choice she ever made — brassy, slightly subversive, anything but normal. Decades later, people are still talking about that movie, and it’s truly insane that Lake was returning for its legacy years on recently, including a Los Angeles staging of the “Hairspray” musical in 2023.
However, it was “The Ricki Lake Show” that put her on the map as a household name. Debuting in the early ’90s, the series style became a signature daytime talk format of its time, going head-to-head with cultural titans like Oprah and Jerry Springer. What drove Lake’s version home was she defined as someone approachable – she was not playing the part of a celebrity host far removed from her audience, but herself, and audiences bought — hard.
Outside of the show itself, Lake took her platform as a way to help normalize conversations that at least weren’t yet very mainstream.She has been open about body image, relationships and the pressures of being a young woman in the public eye long before “authenticity” became a marketing buzzword. That willingness to be honest on camera became a throughline that followed her into every chapter since.
A Second Act in Documentary Film Making
Many people don’t realise that Lake didn’t simply fade from the talk show circuit into obscurity — she moved into serious advocacy work. She co-produced and starred in ‘The Business of Being Born’, a documentary about the practice of childbirth in America that became a touchstone for the natural birth movement. It’s a really influential piece of work, still cited in conversations about maternal health and hospital birthing culture, and showed a whole other side of Lake than the daytime TV persona most people associated her with.
That project was personal to her, too. In that documentary, her son Milo, born in 1997, appears, a note that signals how Lake has always blended her public work with her private experience, rather than keeping them in separate lanes. That’s part of what has made her career feel so personal to long-time fans — you’re not just watching a media figure, you’re watching someone tell her own life story in real time.
Personal Loss, Public Strength
Lake’s life has not been without real hardship and she’s been strangely candid about working through it in public. Lake was married to jewellery designer Christian Evans until his untimely death in 2017, ricki lake which Lake has spoken about with remarkable candour over the years, rather than closing the door on it. That kind of transparency has become a bit of a signature for her – it’s not that she performs grief or joy for the cameras, she just lets people see it.
On a personal level, she found new ground when she started dating Ross Burningham, who she married in 2022 after a mutual friend introduced them a couple of years earlier. Lake said he was “blissfully happy.” in the marriage and attributed it to a broader lifestyle change she and her husband have been on. It’s a nice reminder that reinvention isn’t always about a career move — sometimes it’s just about creating a life that feels right.
Health, Transformation and Talking Openly About Ageing
More recently, Lake has become almost as well-known for her candour about ageing and her body’s changes as she was for her talk show. She and Burningham began losing weight together in the autumn of 2023, on an intermittent fasting plan, a keto diet and regular exercise like Pilates, and have called it a lifestyle change, not a quick fix. She’s been blunt about the fact neither of them used weight loss medicine to get there, while making it clear that she doesn’t judge those who do.
This same openness was extended to plastic surgery. “I had a face and neck lift after I lost weight and I was very candid about it on ‘Watch What Happens Live’ and didn’t shy away from the questions about it,” Lake said candidly. She marked the two-year anniversary of that procedure by posting detailed before-and-after photos on Instagram, saying she had a deep plane lower face and neck lift, along with a mild CO2 laser treatment. She said the results feel natural and long-lasting and the whole decision was about being tied to loose skin left over from her weight loss, not vanity for its own sake. It’s a great extension of what’s made her career so watchable in the first place. Whether hosting a talk show, producing a documentary or posting an honest Instagram caption about plastic surgery, Lake has built a whole public persona around not pretending. In an era where so much of celebrity culture is over-curated, that kind of directness is still refreshing — and it’s probably why people keep paying attention to her, chapter after chapter.
Final thoughts
What makes Ricki Lake’s story worth telling is not any one role or headline, but the pattern across all of them. From teen movie star to talk show titan to documentary producer to one of the more candid celebrityvoices on ageing and reinvention and at each stop she’s chosen to show her work instead of hiding behind a polished image. It’s a rarer trait in entertainment than people realise.
Her career also serves as a handy reminder that reinvention doesn’t have to mean starting from scratch. When “The Ricki Lake Show” ended, Lake didn’t leave behind who she was — she took the same straight talk to her documentaries, her personal relationships and now her candour about weight loss and cosmetic surgery. It’s probably why her audience has followed her so consistently over four decades: each chapter builds on the one before rather than replacing it.
FAQ’s
Does Ricki Lake have kids?
“Yes, she has two sons. Her older son is featured in “The Business of Being Born,” a testament to the way she has woven her personal life into her advocacy over the years.
Why are people still on Ricki Lake’s career?
Mostly for her consistency of being open and unfiltered, whether she’s talking about her talk show days, her documentary work, personal loss, and her more recent health and cosmetic transformations. That simplicity has been the throughline of her public life for decades.
Why’d her talk show end?
Talk shows just don’t run forever. Hers had a good long run in the ’90s and early 2000s, then the format cooled off like it did for a lot of hosts. She moved into film production after that.
How’d she lose the weight?
Fasting, keto, and Pilates, basically, starting around late 2023. She’s said flat out she didn’t use any weight loss meds for it.
And the face lift?
She had one, plus a light CO2 laser thing. Posted before-and-afters about it, even did an anniversary post two years later.
Does she still show up publicly much?
Not like she used to, but she’s on Instagram a lot, and she still pops up in entertainment news pretty regularly.
