Top Chef's Padma Lakshmi was born on September 1, 1970, in the South Indian State of Kerala, India.
Her family moved to Chennai, Tamil Nadu, before finally moving to the United States.
In 1992 she graduated from Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts with a B.A. with honors in Theater Arts.
She began her modeling career at the age of 20, after being discovered by a modeling agent while sitting in a caf� in Spain.
Padma has modeled for designers Emanuel Ungaro, Ralph Lauren, and Alberta Ferretti.
In the 2001 Mariah Carey movie "Glitter", Padma played the lip syncing disco singer Sylk.
She was also in the Bollywood film "Boom" co-starring with Amitabh Bachchan and Jackie Shroff.
Padma co-starred with Aishwarya Rai and Dylan McDermott in the 2005 film "The Mistress of Spices".
On TV she has appeared on Star Trek: Enterprise, the ABC TV series The Ten Commandments and of course she has been on Top Chef since season two.
As a writer, her first cookbook was Easy Exotic.
It won the Best First Book at the 1999 World Cookbook Awards at Versailles.
On October 2, 2007, she released her second cookbook, Tangy, Tart, Hot and Sweet.
Padme married the novelist Salman Rushdie on April 17, 2004, in New York City.
She is currently in an ad for Hardee's Western Thickburger.
