Padma Lakshmi

At 54 years old, Padma Lakshmi has this physical status:

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Top Chef, the host of the US culinary competition program. She has been hosting the show continuously since season 2 (2006), with season 16 (2018) being the most recent.

In 2009, she was nominated for Outstanding Reality Host for her contributions to her profession. She has released three cookbooks and one memoir.

She has also worked in film and television, and she has hosted several cooking shows before Top Chef.

She has also launched her own kitchenware line.

Early life

Padma Parvati Lakshmi was born in Madras (now Chennai, India) to a Tamil Brahmin family. Vijaya's mother is a former oncology nurse. When she was two years old, her parents divorced.

At the age of four, Lakshmi immigrated to the United States and was raised in New York City before heading to La Puente, California, with her mother and stepfather. She recalled being bullied and endured Anti-Indian bigotry as a teenager growing up in Los Angeles, which caused her to struggle with "internalized self-loathing."

When Lakshmi was 14 years old, she was hospitalized for three weeks and later diagnosed with Stevens-Johnson syndrome, a rare condition characterized by hypersensitivity to an infection or a potentially lethal reaction to certain types of medications.

She was hospitalized in a car accident in Malibu, California, leaving her with a fractured right hip and a shattered right upper arm. The arm injury necessitated surgery, but she kept a seven-inch scar between her elbow and shoulder.

Lakshmi revealed she was assaulted by her older boyfriend when she was 16, something she did not report in a 2018 essay for The New York Times. She said she learned that her decision to avoid reporting the rape resulted from her stepfather's relative's assaulting her when she was seven years old. She told her mother and stepfather that they had been notified of her son's exploitation and told her that she had been sent by her grandparents for a year. "The lesson was: You'll be laughed out if you speak up," she said. "I am speaking now because I want you all to fight so that our daughters never hear this fear and shame, and our sons know that girls' bodies do not exist for their pleasure and that abuse has traumatic consequences."

In 1988, Lakshmi graduated from William Workman High School in City of Industry, California.

In 1992, Lakshmi graduated from Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, with a degree in theater arts and American literature. She began modeling while an exchange student in Madrid, Spain.

Personal life

Salman Rushdie, a novelist, married Lakshmi in April 2004 after being together for five years. Rushdie announced that Lakshmi had requested a divorce in January 2007, and that the couple married in July later this year. Theodore J. Forstmann, a billionaire, was dated by her. She had a daughter with businessman Adam Dell during a break in her friendship with Forstmann.

Lakshmi speaks four languages: Tamil, Hindi, English, and Italian.

Lakshmi was diagnosed with endometriosis at the age of 36, a condition she had suffered from from birth.

Lakshmi is a co-founder of the Endometriosis Foundation of America, a non-profit group dedicated to raising public knowledge, education, and legislative advocacy of the disease. The foundation was instrumental in the establishment of the MIT Center for Gynepathology Research, where Lakshmi gave the keynote address. She has worked in India since 2007 as a global ambassador for Keep a Child Alive, and has traveled to India on behalf of children.

Lakshmi is known as a proponent of immigrant rights, the independent restaurant industry, and women's rights.

Lakshmi is the American Civil Liberties Union's ambassador for migrant and women's rights. She has also sluggishly criticized skin-lightening creams that are sold to people of color. She has also discussed the colourism she has encountered while living in India and the United States.

On March 7, 2019, Lakshmi was named United Nations Development Programme Goodwill Ambassador. "My main aim as UNDP Goodwill Ambassador is to bring a spotlight on the fact that poverty impacts people in both rich and poor countries alike." Many countries have greatly reduced poverty, but inequality has remained more pronounced," Lakshmi said. "Inequality is exacerbated by gender, age, ethnicity, and ethnicity," the author writes. It is particularly concerning to women, minorities, and others who face brutal discrimination in the societies in which they live." The United Nations Correspondents Association (UNCA) Laureate of the Year Award in December 2021 (UNCA). Lakshmi was honoured at the 20th edition of the ACLU's Sing Out For Freedom benefit concert in October 2022, as well as Patti Smith and Shaina Taub.

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Career

In effect, Lakshmi began modeling at age 21, when a modeling agent discovered Lakshmi while studying abroad in Madrid. "I was the first Indian model to have a career in Paris, Milan, and New York," she said. I'm the first one to admit that I was a novelty." By acting as a model and actress, Lakshmi was able to pay off her college loans.

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

Lakshmi has appeared on the front pages of Redbook, Vogue India, FHM, Cosmopolitan, L'Officiel India, Asian Woman, Elle, Avenue, Harper's Bazaar, Town & Country, and Newsweek. She also took the liberty issue of Allure in May 2009.

Mario Testino and Helmut Newton have shot.

Lakshmi is the current host and one of the judges on the television show Top Chef. The show has been nominated for the Outstanding Reality-Complement Award from season 2 to season 19, with season 6 winning the award in 2010.

She also acts as an executive producer on the show. In 2009 and 2020 for Top Chef, Lakshmi was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Host for a Reality or Reality Competition Program. Lakshmi received three Critics' Choice Awards for Top Chef in 2020.

Lakshmi is also the creator, host, and executive producer of Taste the Country with Padma Lakshmi, which premiered on Hulu on June 18, 2020 and was named with the Gotham Award for Best Culinary Show and a Critic's Choice Award. Taste the Country was awarded 100 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Taste the Country: Holiday Edition, a Hulu special, was released in 2021. Lakshmi extends and rewrites the meaning of American food in Taste the Country. In June 2022, Lakshmi was given her first James Beard Foundation Award for Taste the Country: Holiday Edition.

In 1997, Lakshmi appeared as a host of Domenica In, Italy's top-rated television show, for the first time. She appeared on Food Network's Passport, which was part of the larger series Melting Pot in 2001, where she created dishes from around the world. On the Food Network in the United States and internationally on the Discovery Channels, she hosted two one-hour specials in South India and Spain for the British culinary tourism show Planet Food.

Lakshmi was also a contributing contributor for season 19 of The View from 2015 to 2016. In an episode of TBS' Drop the Mic that aired on December 26, 2017, she competed and won over music producer Randy Jackson. "A special that honors the rich diversity of Asian and Pacific Islander groups as part of Sesame Workshop's continuing racial justice campaign" has appeared on See Us Coming Together.

In the Italian pirate films The Son of Sandokan and Caraibi (Pirates: Blood Brothers), she appeared in her first film roles. In the 2001 American film Glitter, starring Mariah Carey, she had a comedic supporting role as the lipsynching disco singer Sylk. In 2002, Lakshmi made a guest appearance in "Precious Cargo," the 37th episode of the science fiction television series Star Trek: Enterprise. Madhuvanthi was the protagonist of the TV show Sharpe's Challenge, which aired in 2006). Princess Bithia appeared in ABC's Biblical TV series The Ten Commandments in 2006. In 2009, Lakshmi appeared in the video for the Eels' "That Look You Give That Guy" (that Looks Like A Guy).

She appeared in the 2003 Bollywood film Boom, alongside Katrina Kaif and Madhu Sapre, as one of three supermodels accused of stealing diamonds. In Paul Mayeda Berges' 2005 film The Mistress of Spices, she appeared as Geeta. In 2009, Lakshmi appeared on Whose Line Is It Anyway? and made a guest appearance on NBC's 30 Rock. In 2014, there were 104 million visitors on the internet.

At the 1999 Gourmand World Cookbook Awards in Versailles, Lakshmi's first book, Easy Exotic, a collection of international recipes and short essays, was named as the Best First Book. Tangy, Tart, Hot and Sweet, her second book, was released on October 2, 2007 and was named one of Apple's Best Books of 2021. On International Women's Day, March 8, 2016, her first book, Love, Losses, and What We Ate, was published. The Encyclopedia of Spices and Herbs, Lakshmi's third book, an encyclopedia, and reference guide, was published on October 4, 2016. Tomatoes for Neela, her first children's book, and illustrated by Juana Martinez-Neal, debuted fourth on The New York Times best-seller list on August 31, 2021.

Lakshmi also contributed to The Best American Travel Writing 2021, a collection of essays from well-known travel writers, written in 2021 by Lakshmi.

Lakshmi wrote an article on style for Vogue's American edition, as editor Anna Wintour's request. Following editor Glenda Bailey's commission, she wrote a column on style for Harper's Bazaar (both UK and US editions).

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