Padma Lakshmi Parents: Meet Vaidyanathan & Vijaya Lakshmi

Padma Lakshmi was born in Madras, India into a Tamil Brahmin family. Her mother, Vijaya is a retired oncology nurse. Her parents divorced when she was two years old.

There isn’t much information about Lakshmi’s parents on the internet.

Lakshmi emigrated to the United States at age four and was raised in New York City before moving to La Puente, California with her mother and stepfather. As a teenager growing up in Los Angeles, she stated that she was bullied and endured anti-Indian racism, which caused her to struggle to overcome “internalised self-loathing”.

Lakshmi is the current host and one of the judges on the television show Top Chef. She also serves as an executive producer of the show. She starred in the 2003 Bollywood film Boom, alongside Katrina Kaif and Madhu Sapre, as one of three supermodels accused of stealing diamonds. She has also made a guest appearance on the NBC series, 30 Rock in 2009 and appeared on Whose Line Is It Anyway? in 2014.