Lakshmi

Lakshmi wrote in The New York Times that she was sexually assaulted as a small girl, "When I was 7 years old, my stepfather’s relative touched me between my legs and put my hand on his erect penis. Shortly after I told my mother and stepfather, they sent me to India for a year to live with my grandparents. The lesson was: If you speak up, you will be cast out."

Lakshmi was also an official contributor for the season 19 of The View from 2015 to 2016. For celebrity contestant, she competed and won against music producer Randy Jackson in an episode of TBS's Drop the Mic that aired on December 26, 2017.

In 2009, Lakshmi briefly dated and broke off with venture capitalist Adam Dell. After that, she entered a relationship with businessman Teddy Forstmann from 2009 to 2011. During this time, Lakshmi gave birth to a baby girl, Krishna Thea Lakshmi-Dell on February 20, 2010. Lakshmi was initially unclear as to the identity of the father. Paternity testing revealed that Adam Dell was the father. In 2011, Dell sued for custody of their daughter, and later both reached agreement to have joint custody and co-parenting. They have resumed dating since 2017.

Lakshmi has appeared on the covers of Redbook, Vogue India, FHM, Cosmopolitan, L'Officiel India, Asian Woman, Avenue, Industry Magazine, Marie Claire (India Edition), Harper's Bazaar, Town & Country, and Newsweek. She also posed nude for the May 2009 issue of Allure.

She also serves as an executive producer of the show. Lakshmi was nominated in the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Host for a Reality or Reality-Competition Program in 2009 for the season 5 of Top Chef.

In 2009, Lakshmi launched her first line of jewelry, Padma. She also has two tableware collections. The first, The Padma Collection, is a line of dinnerware composed of Moroccan ceramics and Turkish glass. The second, Easy Exotic, is a line of more casual kitchenware. Under the Easy Exotic brand, Lakshmi also has a line of specialty spices and teas as well as a line of organic frozen rices.

Her first cookbook, Easy Exotic, a compilation of international recipes and short essays released in 1999, was awarded the Best First Book at the 1999 Gourmand World Cookbook Awards in Versailles. Her second cookbook, Tangy, Tart, Hot and Sweet, was released on October 2, 2007. Her first memoir, Love, Loss and What We Ate, was released on International's Women's Day, March 8, 2016. Lakshmi released her third cookbook, an encyclopedia and cookbook, The Encyclopedia of Spices and Herbs in October 2016.

Lakshmi is a co-founder of The Endometriosis Foundation of America, a nonprofit organization focused on increasing awareness, education, research, and legislative advocacy against the disease. The foundation was instrumental in the opening of the MIT Center for Gynepathology Research, where Lakshmi gave the keynote address. She is a global ambassador for Keep a Child Alive, and since 2007 has traveled to sites in India on their behalf. She is also a strong advocate of women's rights.

She has hosted the show continuously since season 2 (2006), with season 17 (2020) being the latest. For her work, she received a Primetime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Reality Host in 2009.

For hosting, she is the current host and one of the judges on the television show Top Chef, having joined in 2006 during its season 2. She has since hosted the show consecutively, with season 17 the latest. The show has been nominated in Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Reality-Competition Program from season 2 up until season 16, with season 6 winning the award in 2010.

She had two ovarian cysts removed when she was 30, but her doctor did not inform her that she had a chronic condition that needed to be monitored. In 2005, she was rushed to the hospital because of severe abdominal cramps.

In April 2004, after dating and living together for three years, Lakshmi married novelist Salman Rushdie. In July 2007, the couple filed for divorce.

She starred in the 2003 Bollywood film Boom, alongside Katrina Kaif and Madhu Sapre, as one of three supermodels who are accused of stealing diamonds. She played the role of Geeta in Paul Mayeda Berges's 2005 film The Mistress of Spices. Lakshmi also made a guest appearance on the NBC series 30 Rock in 2009 and appeared on Whose Line Is It Anyway? in 2014.

For acting, Lakshmi's first film roles were in the Italian pirate movies The Son of Sandokan and Caraibi (Pirates: Blood Brothers). She had a comical supporting part as the lip-synching disco singer Sylk in the 2001 American movie Glitter, starring Mariah Carey. In 2002, she made a guest appearance as alien princess Kaitaama in "Precious Cargo," the 37th episode of the science fiction TV series Star Trek: Enterprise. She portrayed Madhuvanthi in the TV series Sharpe's Challenge (2004-05). In 2006, Lakshmi appeared in ABC's Biblical TV series The Ten Commandments as Princess Bithia. In 2009, Lakshmi starred in the video for the Eels song "That Look You Give That Guy".

Previously, Lakshmi first served as a host of Domenica In, Italy's top-rated television show, in 1997. She hosted the Food Network series Padma's Passport, which was part of the larger series Melting Pot in 2001, where she cooked recipes from around the world. She also hosted two one-hour specials in South India and Spain for the British culinary tourism show Planet Food, broadcast on the Food Network in the U.S. and internationally on the Discovery Channels.

Lakshmi graduated from William Workman High School in City of Industry, California, in 1988. She is a 1992 graduate of Clark University, in Worcester, Massachusetts, where she earned a BA with honors in theater arts. During her time in school, she studied abroad in Madrid, where her modeling career began.

She also revealed a 1986 sexual assault in 2018, in which she was raped at the age of 16. She wrote, "It took me decades to talk about this with intimate partners and a therapist. Now, 32 years after my rape, I am stating publicly what happened. I am speaking now because I want us all to fight so that our daughters never know this fear and shame and our sons know that girls’ bodies do not exist for their pleasure and that abuse has grave consequences."

In 1984, when Lakshmi was 14 years old, she was hospitalized for three weeks, and eventually diagnosed with Stevens–Johnson syndrome, a rare illness caused by hypersensitivity to an infection, or a potentially fatal reaction to certain kinds of medications.

Padma Parvati Lakshmi Vaidynathan (born September 1, 1970), known professionally as Padma Lakshmi (pronounced [ˈpəd̪maː ˈləkʃmiː] ), is an American author, actress, model, and television host. She is the host of the US cooking competition program Top Chef.