Christiane Amanpour kindly met me for Saturday brunch at my place on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and, though we had never met before, this striking, world-famous woman sat at the kitchen table looking completely at home.

“This is amazing,” I said. “It’s as if you’ve sprung out of the TV on the wall.”

“Perhaps I’m a hologram,” she said, and laughed.

But Ms. Amanpour, CNN’s chief international correspondent, who has reported fervently from the global front lines of war for over 25 years, has always been exceptionally real and unpretentious—although she looked a little wary when I asked, “Can you cook?”

“Not that much,” she confessed.

“I was going to ask if you might make us scrambled eggs—but I have backup.”

“What a relief!” she exclaimed. “Fantastic!”

I had laid on a selection of sandwiches and cookies bought by my own hand from Le Pain Quotidien across the street. “Lovely!” she said, helping herself to a comforting egg-salad sandwich. “Coffee would be great, actually, if it isn’t a pain in the neck.”

Christiane Maria Amanpour was born in London in 1958 and raised in Tehran, the Catholic daughter of a British mother and an Iranian father, who was an airline executive. Her adolescence included time at a convent boarding school in England; she grew up speaking Persian, English, and French. The family left everything behind in Iran after the 1979 Islamic revolution.

“Our lives were suddenly turned upside down. But I was old enough to be fascinated by what was happening. It set me on the road to a career in journalism.”

Her father, she mentioned, is now 97 years old. “He’s incredibly with it! We’re a very, very close family. My mother is 19 years younger than my dad, and they’re still together.” She also has three younger sisters (a teacher, a journalist, and a photographer).

Her British roots have never quite left her. In 2007 she received a C.B.E. (Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, no less) from the Queen at Buckingham Palace. “I’ll tell you something odd. I grew up a monarchist in Iran. It was all I knew. And I respected the British monarchy. But in the interim I’ve tried to put the spotlight on people who are struggling for their rights, or the right to stay alive, and that really affected me when it came to standing in front of the Queen to receive the honor. Because I couldn’t curtsy—even though I grew up curtsying. I bowed instead.”