Padma Lakshmi Biography
Posted on Nov 13, 2006 Under All Supermodel Biographies, American Supermodels, Indian Supermodels, Padma Lakshmi |Padma Lakshmi (b. 1970) is a New York-based Indian-American supermodel, actress, talk show host and award-winning cookbook author. She was born in Chennai, India in 1970, and is fluent in five languages - English, Hindi, Italian, Spanish, and Tamil. Her first name literally means “lotus” in Sanskrit.
She is married to novelist Salman Rushdie. Her cookbook Easy Exotic was awarded Best First Book at the 1999 World Cookbook Awards at Versailles. She was host of the Food Network series, Padma’s Passport which is part of the larger series, Melting Pot. She has also been a guest host on parts of the British culinary tourism show, Planet Food. She hosted the segments on India and Spain. Other notable television roles include a guest appearance as an imperious princess in an episode of Star Trek: Enterprise. She was host of Domenica In, Italy’s top-rated television show. She also starred in Glitter with Mariah Carey and in Boom with Amitabh Bachchan. In 2006 she starred in ABC’s The Ten Commandments with Dougray Scott, Naveen Andrews, and Omar Sharif. She played Sean Bean’s nemesis in the iTV film Sharpe’s Challenge. She is a graduate of Clark University in Massachusetts, where she majored in Theater Arts.
Beginning in October 2006, she began hosting the Bravo reality show Top Chef 2.
Lakshmi’s career first started when she was discovered while sitting in a cafe by a high profile modeling agent in Spain. Ever since then, she has walked for top designers such as Emmanuel Ungaro, Ralph Lauren, and Alberta Ferretti and done ad campaigns for Roberto Cavalli and Versus.