Paul John Hollywood was born in 1966 in Wallasey, Cheshire, the son of bakery proprietor John F. Hollywood and Gillian M. Harman. He was a pupil at The Mosslands School. Hollywood studied sculpture at the Wallasey School of Art but left the school to start work as a baker. He first worked in his father’s bakery in York (the headquarters of a chain called Bread Winner which eventually stretched all the way down the east coast from Aberdeen to Lincolnshire) and then in other bakeries on Merseyside. He eventually went on to become head baker at a number of hotels including The Dorchester, Chester Grosvenor and Spa, and the Cliveden Hotel. He then left the UK for Cyprus, where he worked at two resorts.

In 2008, Hollywood created an almond and roquefort sourdough recipe that was said to be the most expensive bread in Britain. The roquefort is supplied from a specialist in France at £15 per kilo, while the flour for the bread is made by a miller in Wiltshire. Hollywood describes it as a “Rolls-Royce of loaves”. Hollywood is a guest speaker at several food festivals, including the Cumbrian Food Festival, and the BBC Good Food Show and the Cake and Bake Show, both in London. In May 2013, Hollywood began appearing as a judge on The American Baking Competition on CBS.

Hollywood has appeared in guest spots on a number of television programmes, including BBC One’s The Generation Game, The Heaven and Earth Show, ITV’s This Morning, and The Alan Titchmarsh Show. Since the show launched in 2010, Hollywood has been a judge on the BBC programme The Great British Bake Off. In this capacity, he has been described as the “antidote” to judges such as Len Goodman or Simon Cowell in other reality television programmes, on account of his straightforward and honest manner and because his judging is restricted purely to the finished product. His partnership with Mary Berry has been described in The Guardian as being the “secret weapon” of the show and potentially one of the best judging combinations to have appeared on reality television. In September 2016, Love Productions agreed to a three-year deal to move the show from the BBC to Channel 4. Hosts Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins announced that they would not be moving to the new network, followed shortly after by Berry. On the same day as Berry, Hollywood announced that he would be staying with the show.

Hollywood has also starred in Sadie J, a children’s television programme. In 2013, he presented Paul Hollywood’s Bread on BBC Two, in which he gave advice on recipes for different types of bread; however, also featured on the series were recipes for some cakes such as the Danish pastry. He also presented Paul Hollywood’s Pies and Puds, a cookery television series on BBC One.

Hollywood met his future wife, Alexandra (Alex), in Cyprus where he was a head baker at a five star hotel and she was a scuba diving instructor. They later married on the island. Hollywood and Alex separated in 2013 after he admitted to an affair with his The American Baking Competition co-host Marcela Valladolid, later reconciled, and then separated again in November 2017. In August 2019 Hollywood split from 24-year-old girlfriend Summer Monteys-Fullam, ending a two-year relationship.

In August 2015 Hollywood was featured on the BBC genealogy documentary series Who Do You Think You Are? The programme revealed that his grandfather Norman Harman, who served in the Army during World War II, saw action in the Tunisia Campaign and at the Battle of Anzio and that his great-great-grandfather, Kenneth MacKenzie, had been a policeman in the City of Glasgow Police in the 1850s. Hollywood’s great-great-great-grandfather, Donald MacKenzie, had been a crofter in Poolewe, Wester Ross. Donald had also been the post-runner between Poolewe and Dingwall, where he delivered post on foot over a distance of 60 miles (97 km). He covered this distance every week, during his forties, on foot for over a decade. He lived into his 80s.

In 2015 Hollywood began his racing career, making his debut in the Beechdean AMR Aston Martin Vantage GT4 with Andrew Howard, founder of Beechdean Dairies. The pair qualified second in the Britcar Trophy Championship’s first round at Silverstone taking second in class in both races. He also competed at Le Mans in 2015 in the Aston Martin festival. Hollywood has also competed in GT Cup with Jonny Adam and finished first in class. He entered the British GT championship in 2016 and competed in the last three rounds with Jamie Chadwick as his driving partner. In July 2017 he came first in class at the Dunlop endurance race at Silverstone in an Aston Martin GT4, and in November 2017 he raced in his first 24 hr race at Circuit of the Americas coming second in class in an Aston Martin GT8.

In May and June 2017 he presented Paul Hollywood’s Big Continental Road Trip. In December 2017, Hollywood appeared as a judge on The Great American Baking Show, the second incarnation of the GBBO series in the United States.

November 2019, the four-part series Paul Goes to Hollywood premiered on Food Network; the series follows Paul Hollywood on a 3000-mile culinary road trip across America, travelling from New York to Los Angeles onboard a Harley-Davidson.