Padma Parvati Lakshmi, Lady Rushdie (born September 1, 1970 in Chennai, India) is an Indian-American cookbook author, actress, and model who has described herself as the first well-known model from India. She has been the host of the reality television program Top Chef since season two and is an ambassador for the United Nations Development Fund for Women.
She was born into a Tamil Brahmin family in 1970 and raised in Madras, India and the United States. Her first name means "lotus" in Sanskrit, as well as "pearl" or "jewel." Parvati is a consort of Shiva. Lakshmi is the name of the Hindu goddess of wealth. In traditional Iyer style, she does not appear to have a surname.
Her parents' only child, Lakshmi is the daughter of an executive with Pfizer and his first wife, Vijaya, a nurse who presently specializes in suicide prevention. Her parents separated when she was one and divorced a year later. Both parents later remarried; her mother's third and present husband is a plumber. She reportedly had no further contact with her father until 1998.
When she was 14 years old, she was involved in a serious automobile accident, causing an injury of her right arm, which required surgery leaving a 7 inch scar, between her elbow and shoulder.
By a later marriage of her father's, Lakshmi has a half-brother and a half-sister, who was an actress and classical dancer but is now pursuing a career with special-needs children. As Lakshmi said in an interview published in The Guardian, "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."
Reportedly, she spent part of her childhood attending elementary school in Chennai, India. Lakshmi is a 1992 graduate of Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, where she received a B.A. with honors in Theater Arts.
Lakshmi was brought up as a vegetarian and has admitted that because of this, she sometimes becomes "squeamish" when sampling other cultural delicacies.
More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Padma_Lakshmi