Padma Lakshmi Biography

Padma Parvati Lakshmi (; born September 1, 1970) is an Indian American cookbook author, actress, model and television host. Her debut cookbook Easy Exotic won her the "Best First Book" award at the 1999 Gourmand World Cookbook Awards. She has been the host of the US reality television program Top Chef since season two in 2006, for which she received a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Host for a Reality or Reality-Competition Program. In 2010, Top Chef won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Reality-Competition Program.

Early life

Padma Lakshmi was born in Chennai, India in an Iyengar Brahmin family. Her father was a Pfizer executive and her mother Vijaya, the first wife of her father, was a nurse who specialized in suicide prevention. Her mother tongue is Tamil. She grew up shuttling between her grandparents in Chennai and her mother in New York. She is her parents' only child from this marriage. Her parents separated when she was age one. They divorced a year later. Both parents later remarried, and Lakshmi has a younger paternal half-brother and half-sister. The latter formerly worked as an actress and classical dancer but is now pursuing a career with children with special needs. In an interview in The Guardian, Lakshmi said, "My father had quit his job as an executive at Pfizer to manage her career. That was kind of like rubbing salt in the wound. I didn't understand why he wanted that relationship with her, and not with me."

In 1984, when she was 14 years old, Padma was in a car accident in Malibu, California, causing an injury to her right arm that required surgery, which left a 7-inch scar between her elbow and shoulder. The incident took place on a Sunday afternoon as Padma was being driven home from a Hindu temple in Malibu. She remembers a flash of orange, looking over to see the large car upon her. Padma describes the event in the April 2001 edition of Vogue, saying, "Being in a car crash was like an exhilarating hallucination, an unbelievable moment that oddly remains one of the most beautiful images in my memory." The car left Padma with injuries that included a fractured right hip and a shattered upper right arm.

Education

Lakshmi graduated from Workman High School, in the City of Industry, California. She is a 1992 graduate of Clark University, in Worcester, Massachusetts, where she received a B.A., with Honors, in Theatre Arts.

She speaks English, Tamil, Hindi, Italian and Spanish.

Career

Modeling

Lakshmi's career began at age 18, when during a study trip in her college years she was discovered by a modeling agent in Madrid, Spain while sitting in a café. As she has stated, "I was the first Indian model to have a career in Paris, Milan and New York. I'm the first one to admit that I was a novelty." Lakshmi managed to pay off her college loans while working as a model and actress.

She has modeled for top designers such as Emanuel Ungaro, Ralph Lauren, and Alberta Ferretti and appeared in ad campaigns for Roberto Cavalli and Versus. She was a favorite model of the photographer Helmut Newton, whose photographs of her often highlighted the large scar on her right arm.

Lakshmi appeared on the covers of RedBook, Vogue India, FHM, Cosmopolitan, L'Officiel India, Asian Woman, Avenue, Industry Magazine, Marie Claire (India Edition), Harper's Bazaar, Town & Country and Newsweek. Lakshmi also posed nude for the May 2009 issue of Allure magazine.

Cookbooks

Her first cookbook Easy Exotic, a compilation of international recipes, was awarded Best First Book at the 1999 Gourmand World Cookbook Awards at Versailles. She was host of the Food Network series Padma's Passport, which was part of the larger series Melting Pot in 2001, where Lakshmi cooked primarily vegetarian cuisines. She also hosted two one-hour specials on South India and Spain for the British culinary tourism show Planet Food, broadcast on the Food Network in the U.S. and internationally on the Discovery Channels. Her second cookbook, Tangy, Tart, Hot and Sweet, was released October 2, 2007.

Film and television

Lakshmi's first role was in an Italian murder mystery Il figlio di Sandokan and her subsequent role in Caraibi (Pirates: Blood Brothers), a costume drama about 17th-century pirates got Lakshmi hooked on acting in 1999. She had a comical supporting role as the lip synching disco singer Sylk in the 2001 American movie Glitter with Mariah Carey. She starred with Amitabh Bachchan and Jackie Shroff in the 2003 Hindi action film Boom as Shiela Bardez, one of a trio of super models accused of stealing diamonds. She played the role of Geeta in Paul Mayeda Berges' 2005 film The Mistress of Spices.

Lakshmi served as hostess of Domenica In, Italy's top-rated television show in 1997. She made a 2002 guest appearance as alien princess Kaitaama in "Precious Cargo", the 37th episode of the science fiction TV series Star Trek: Enterprise. Lakshmi portrayed Sean Bean's nemesis Madhuvanthi in the 2004-2005 TV series Sharpe's Challenge. In 2006, Lakshmi appeared in ABC's TV series The Ten Commandments with Dougray Scott, Naveen Andrews, and Omar Sharif. She serves as lead host and judge on the television show Top Chef, joining in 2006 during its second season, and was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Reality-Competition Program as co-host in 2007. Lakshmi was nominated for the Emmy Award for Outstanding Host for a Reality or Reality-Competition Program in 2009 for Top Chef. The show won the Emmy for Outstanding Reality-Competition Program in 2010.

Lakshmi has expressed a desire to work in Tamil films in future, and stated she would love to meet Kamal Haasan.

Lakshmi made a guest appearance on the show 30 Rock in 2009.

Music video

In 2009, Lakshmi starred in the Eels video for the song "That Look You Give That Guy" playing the love interest of Mark Oliver Everett.?

Jewelry design

Combining her culinary and fashion style tastes, Lakshmi launched her first line of jewelry in 2009. Titled "Padma", the first collection consisted of forty pieces.

Personal life

On April 17, 2004, in New York City, Lakshmi married the novelist Salman Rushdie, twenty-three years her senior, to whom she was introduced at a party in 1999 hosted by the journalist and editor Tina Brown. On July 2, 2007, the couple filed for divorce. She is the model for one of the central characters " and love interests " in Rushdie's novel Fury (a novel dedicated to her as well).

On October 1, 2009, after years of struggling with endometriosis, a condition that causes pelvic pain and has been associated with infertility, Lakshmi confirmed that she was pregnant. Lakshmi also co-founded The Endometriosis Foundation of America, which is a nonprofit organization focused on increasing awareness, education, research, and legislative advocacy against the disease. On February 20, 2010, Lakshmi gave birth to a baby girl named Krishna Thea Lakshmi. Although the father's identity was not initially given, it was later revealed to be Adam Dell. In January 2011, Dell sued Lakshmi for sole custody of their daughter.

Although professing little interest in fashion, Lakshmi has written articles on style for the American edition of Vogue magazine, at Anna Wintour's request, and writes her own column on style in Harper's Bazaar, following a commission from Editor Glenda Bailey.

Lakshmi was brought up as a vegetarian and has admitted that because of this, she sometimes becomes "squeamish" when sampling other cultural delicacies. In 2009, she starred in a television advertisement for the Carl's Jr. restaurant chain eating a Western Bacon Cheeseburger and in her second cookbook Tangy, Tart, Hot and Sweet she credits the chain with bringing her away from vegetarianism during her teenage years.

Padma Lakshmi has dated Princess Diana's ex-financier Theodore 'Teddy' Forstmann. He has left an undisclosed sum of money in a trust fund for Padma Lakshmi's two-year-old daughter, Krishna. It had been reported that despite not being her father, Forstmann had been, "....carrying out the role of father since the moment Krishna was delivered into his arms."

Selected filmography

Year	Film	Type	Role
1995	Unzipped	Documentary (High Fashion)	Herself
1997	Domenica In	TV Series (Italy)	Host
1998	Il Figlio di Sandokan	TV Series (Italian, Drama)
1999	Caraibi - Pirates: Blood Brothers	TV Series (Italian, Adventure)	Malinche
2000	Linda e il brigadiere  ep: "Il fratello di Linda"	TV Series (Italian, Comedy)	Indian Lady
	Planet Food	Documentary (Cooking)	Host
2001	Glitter	Film (US, Drama)	Sylk
	Melting Pot: Padma's Passport	TV Series (US, Cooking)	Host
2002	Star Trek: Enterprise  episode: "Precious Cargo"	TV Series (US, Sci-Fi)	Kaitaama
2003	Boom	Film (Indian, Drama)	Shiela Bardez
2005	The Mistress of Spices	Film (Drama)	Geeta
2006	The Ten Commandments	TV Series (US, Biblical)	Princess Bithia
	Sharpe  episode: "Sharpe's Challenge"	TV Series (Action/History/War)	Madhuvanthi
2006"present	Top Chef	TV Series (US, Reality/Cooking)	Host / Judge
2009	30 Rock  episode: "The Problem Solvers"	TV Series (US, Comedy)	Herself