Padma Lakshmi

About Padma Lakshmi

Padma Parvati Lakshmi, Lady Rushdie (born September 1, 1970) is an Indian American cookbook author, actress, and former model who has described herself as the first well-known model from India. She has been the host of the US reality television program Top Chef since season 2.

Born in Kerala to Malayali parents, Padma and her family moved to Chennai, Tamil Nadu before spending most of her adolescent life in the United States.

Her parents' only child together, Lakshmi is the daughter of a Pfizer executive and his first wife, Vijaya, a nurse who currently specializes in suicide prevention. Her parents separated when she was one and divorced a year later. Both parents later remarried.

In 1984, when she was 14 years old, Lakshmi was involved in a serious automobile accident, causing an injury to her right arm that required surgery, which left a 7-inch scar between her elbow and shoulder.

The accident happened on a Sunday afternoon as Lakshmi was being driven home by her parents from a Hindu temple in Malibu. She remembers a loud bang, looking out the windshield and realizing the family's red Mercury Sedan was airborne. Padma described the event in the April 2001 edition of ''Vogue'', saying, "Flying in a car felt like an exhilarating hallucination, an unbelievable ride that oddly remains one of the most beautiful images in my memory."

The car flew 40 feet down an embankment and straight into a tree. The tree trunk fell directly on top of the car. Lakshmi remained conscious, covered in glass, for the 40 minutes it took for the paramedics and firefighters to get through the traffic. They used the "jaws of life" to extract the family from the crumpled car.

A helicopter landed in the middle of the highway to airlift her parents away while an ambulance carried Lakshmi to the hospital. Everyone survived. Her injuries included a fractured right hip and a shattered upper right arm.

From a later marriage of her father, Lakshmi has a half-brother and a half-sister who was 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."

Padma is a 1992 graduate of Clark University in Worcester, MA with a degree with honors in theatre arts. She graduated from William Workman High School in the City of Industry, California.