Lisa Ray little more biography

Lisa Ray (Bengali: লিসা রায়), born 4 April 1972, is a Canadian actress and former model.

Early life

Lisa Ray was born in Toronto to a Bengali Indian father and a Polish mother and grew up in the suburb of Etobicoke. She excelled academically, doing five years of high school in four, while attending three different high schools: Etobicoke Collegiate Institute, Richview Collegiate Institute and Silverthorn Collegiate Institute.

She spoke Polish to her maternal grandmother and watched movies of Federico Fellini and Satyajit Ray with her cinephile dad. Ray was spotted by an agent in a crowd during a family vacation in India when she was 16, when she began modeling.

Career

Lisa Ray came to public attention when she appeared in an advertisement for Bombay Dyeing wearing a high-cut black swimsuit, opposite Karan Kapoor. Subsequently, she returned to Canada to attend university to study journalism, but a car injury which injured her mother derailed those plans. Instead, she returned to India where she appeared on the cover of Glad Rags wearing a red Baywatch-style swimsuit. The sensation that caused led to more magazine covers, spokesperson deals and a job as host of her own show-business program. A Times of India poll named her the "ninth most beautiful woman of the millennium", the only model in the top ten. She also anchored a TV show Star Biz on Star Movies with actor/model Kelly Dorjee.

She made her cinematic debut in 1994 in the Tamil film Nethaji opposite actor Sarath Kumar where she appeared in a brief role. Later she acted in a Telugu film Takkari Donga opposite Mahesh Babu. After turning down a number of roles, she made her Bollywood debut with the film Kasoor in 2001 opposite Aftab Shivdasani where her voice was subsequently dubbed by Divya Dutta as she could not speak Hindi. Her work in that film caught the eye of Deepa Mehta who cast Ray in the romantic Indian-Canadian romp, Bollywood/Hollywood in 2002. In 2005, she worked again with Mehta in the Oscar-nominated film, Water where she did speak her own lines in Hindi although her voice was dubbed in the final cut of the film. Since then she has worked in productions from Canada, Europe and the United States.

Past rolls include a farm girl in All Hat, a school teacher in A Stone's Throw a housewife in '50s apartheid South Africa in The World Unseen and a Christian-Arab lesbian in the humorously entitled "I Can't Think Straight" directed by Shamim Sarif.

In 2007, she completed filming for Kill Kill Faster Faster, which is a contemporary film noir inspired by the critically acclaimed novel of the same name by Joel Rose. She appeared in a few uninhibited sex scenes, which is very rare for a mainstream actress of Indian origin.

She guest starred in USA Network series Psych, which was directed by Jay Chandrasekhar, which aired on November 30, 2009.

She appeared in the famous song "Afreen Afreen" by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan in 1996.

Lisa Ray has been featured in the Canadian edition of Hello magazine as one of the '50 Most Beautiful People' of the country. She gave a candid interview on her personal cancer trauma and surviving it, appearing on the cover of the 2010 anniversary issue of the Indian men's luxury magazine The Man

Ray has also appeared in a guest role of a reporter, Dominique Ball, in the recent Woody Harrelson movie Defendor.

Ray was seen in UniGlobe Entertainment's cancer docu-drama titled 1 a Minute scheduled for release in 2010. The documentary is being made by Namrata Singh Gujral and will also feature cancer survivors Olivia Newton-John, Diahann Carroll, Melissa Etheridge, Mumtaz and Jaclyn Smith as well as William Baldwin, Daniel Baldwin and Priya Dutt, whose lives have been touched by cancer. The feature is narrated by Kelly McGillis. The film will also star Bárbara Mori, Deepak Chopra and Morgan Brittany.

On November 15, 2011, Ray announced that she had been named to host season two of Top Chef Canada.

Lisa Rani Ray

Mostly Credited As: Lisa Ray
Birth Name: Lisa Rani Ray
Date Of Birth: April 04, 1972 (Age 39)
Country Of Birth:  Canada
Birth Place: Toronto, Ontario
Height: 5' 4" (1.62 m)
 

Biography

Lisa Ray was finishing high school in Canada with aspirations of majoring in Journalism at University when a celebrated fashion magazine approached her to model for them, and she ended up on the cover. This catapulted her into a state of instant celebrity. Her high-profile career got her noticed by Indian filmmakers, but she refused many offers until the offbeat _Kasoor (2000)_, which received a considerable amount of attention. Indian-Canadian director Deepa Mehta then cast her as the lead in the lighthearted romantic comedy Bollywood/Hollywood (2002), which went on to be a huge success in Canada. She subsequently moved to London to study acting and concentrate on a serious career in the performing arts. After graduating from drama school she was reunited with Deepa Mehta in the critically lauded Water (2005/I). She has since carved out a challenging variety of characterizations- everything from a farm girl to a femme fatale- which is a testament to her adaptability and desire for challenge.

Trade Mark

Her cat eyes

Trivia

Voted Star of the Future at the 2002 Toronto Film Festival.

Is of Indian and Polish descent.

Is fluent in Hindi, although it is not her first language.

Named one of the top-10 most beautiful Indian women of the millennium by the Daily Times of India.

Lived in London for three years while attending drama school.

Cut off her waist length hair for her role in 'Water'. It was done while filming a scene.

Trained for 5 months in mime in London.

Declared 'one of the most beautiful women on film' by Ebert and Roeper in a 2007 review of 'Water'.

Features in Canadian edition of Hello magazine as one of the '50 Most Beautiful People' of the country, May 2009.

Was strongly considered for the Bond Girl role of Camille in 'Quantam of Solace'.

Was diagnosed with multiple myeloma on June 23rd, 2009.

Personal Quotes

"The story of my so-called affair with Sanjay Dutt came as a shock to me. I couldn't handle it, so I ran away to Canada."

"I believe in destiny."

"When ever I'm stressed I love getting away and going home to Toronto."

India is such a strong movie-going culture. Watching a film in a cinema there is radically different from watching one anywhere else. And that, in turn, has informed the way films are made there. That's probably why the films are so incredibly long - it's not just about watching the film. The entire family socializes while watching the movie. (...) That's why the acting has to be so loud.

I have no home. I'm kind of placed in London, but Paris is where my boyfriend is. My parents are in Toronto and I work in New York and India a lot. That makes me a bit of a chameleon, and frankly, I like that.

"I do feel that I'm equally at ease in Paris as I am in a village in India as I am in a café in Montreal or on Queen Street in Toronto. I like that. It work for my acting process as well."

"In the past, whenever I have seen myself on screen, I have felt uncomfortable so often, wondering why I reacted in a particular way in one scene, or why I didn't react in a particular way in another. But nothing of that sort happened when I saw it at the premiere. Of course, Deepa had made sure all of us did our work very well." (5-10-2006)

On how she got the role in Water (2005/I): "Deepa sent me the script about two years ago. It had cheesy title like River Moon, and I was told it would be shot without any publicity in Sri Lanka, and we were not to talk about it till it was completed. As I was reading it, I knew it was Water. There was no question of rejecting it. When I remembered what had happened to Deepa in India, I became even more determined to be in the film." (10 May 2006)

On preparing for her role in Water (2005/I): "Deepa gave us all plenty to read about the state of widows, not only in the 1930s but also today. But I also knew I had to something more. I decided to go to India, and look at how the widows lived in rural areas. I even went to Varanasi. I went there pretending to be a tourist. I even had my camera! I went to the widows' homes, went to temples, heard widows sing the Radha-Krishna bhajans, and watched them for hours. I followed their body language. I was adding (from the observations) what I had read about them and from the memory of widows in my own family." (10 May 2006)

On meeting the audience for Water (2005): "Even before the film was released, we knew it would be wrong to think that Water is only about widows in a holy city in India. And Canadian audiences knew that instantly. Some people have come out of the theater, telling us that Water made them think a lot about their own communities. A Greek woman told me, 'I never realized it, but we did similar things to our widows.'" (10 May 2006)

When asked if she is not interested in Bollywood films: "Not if I get the kind of parts Deepa offers me. I worked in one film in Bollywood but I am here, and I look forward to films being made here. I have nothing against good Bollywood films. Many are very camp and very over the top -- those films are not for me. I have lived in India for some years and am very proud of my Indian heritage." (10 May 2006)