Lisa Ray relishes stardom in two worlds

Lisa Ray relishes stardom in two worlds

Lisa Ray, born in Toronto to an Indian father and a Polish mother, has made a career out of changing perceptions about what an Indian entertainer is supposed to be.

Newly married this past weekend to Jason Denhi, an American management executive, she’s now embarking on new adventures.

Having battled multiple myeloma, a cancer of the white blood cells that produce antibodies, the 40-year-old model-actress is busy reinventing herself these days. Her advocacy for the cause has already helped set up the first research chair for myeloma at Toronto’s Princess Margaret Hospital.

Lisa also hosts the top-rated television show Top Chef Canada. In many ways she was the pace-setter for current actors such as Katrina Kaif and Kalki Koechelin whose struggles with the Hindi language are now overshadowed by tighter scripts, better production values and an increasingly global, evolved audience.

When she was 16, a visit to India on a family holiday changed Lisa’s life. It was then that she was spotted by a modelling agent who insisted on getting her in front of a camera at once. “Extremely photogenic” is how Maureen Wadia, the owner of Gladrags magazine on whose covers Lisa first appeared, remembers her. Soon, a series of high-profile modelling contracts followed.

In pre-liberalised India, Lisa was a sensation. She was seemingly everywhere — in magazines wrapped in nothing but Bombay Dyeing towels and bedsheets, on billboards wearing a black Baywatch-inspired swimsuit cut so high that it left cultural guardians frothing at the mouth, staring out of posters, her hazel eyes hard-selling an array of soaps and cosmetics.

In that tumultuous decade when Mumbai was still Bombay and models and film actors occupied very separate territories, Ray was an undisputed icon for a traditional society’s modern aspirations.

“We were the cool kids on the block,” says Lisa. “And Bollywood was considered very downmarket. The same old men were making the same old stories, and none of us was interested.”

But the likes of big directors Yash Chopra and Subhash Ghai came calling for lead roles in mainstream Bollywood films. “I was terrified. What if I got too used to the money and couldn’t refuse?”

Lisa made her cinematic debut in Tamil film Nethaji (1994) followed soon after with a role in a Telegu film opposite Mahesh Babu. Her appearance in Pakistani musician Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s hit video Afreen in 1996 made her a national rage once again. But it was in 2001 that she appeared in her first Bollywood feature, Vikram Bhatt’s thriller Kasoor.

The film was a mild success and Lisa received critical acclaim, yet her weak Hindi prevented her from becoming a major star. Around this time, she grew disenchanted with the world of glamour and packed her bags, leaving her “complex lover” India behind to study acting in London.

Even before Lisa graduated from her acting course, producer-director Deepa Mehta offered her the lead role of Kalyani in the Oscar-nominated Water (2005). Lisa had worked with Deepa in the romantic Indian-Canadian romp Hollywood Bollywood (2002) and the controversial success of Water cemented her position as a serious actor.

Lisa went on to star in a series of cross-over films such as I Can’t Think Straight and The World Unseen. She played a homosexual in both, and an Indo-Canadian woman in Deepa’s Cooking With Stella (2008). Kill Kill Faster Faster (2008), a noir thriller, got Lisa a lot of attention for her uninhibited, aesthetically shot nude scenes.

“I did a lot of bold stuff. I was still discovering myself as an actor. When you live in a bubble of artistic people like I did for a while, you don’t bother about things like audience reception,” she says.

“I have to emphasise, however, that Bollywood is not India. India is completely different. It’s a great, complex country of so much diversity. Bollywood is all about crass commercialism. It’s very unapologetic. It’s just out to entertain.”

In 2009, Lisa’s life creaked to a halt. Her mother died and then in June, Lisa was diagnosed with multiple myeloma. Within a year, she announced that after a successful stem cell transplant, she was cancer-free. She hasn’t looked back since.

Last year, she made her comeback on television with TLC’s Oh My Gold, where by her own admission, she looked nothing like a TV show host. She has been hosting the second season of Canada’s top-rated TV show Top Chef. Up next is a book about her experiences and a lifestyle brand. Not to mention a grand wedding.

Grateful for this new lease on life and love, Lisa is today busy reinventing herself as a global brand and having fun with it in the process. “I know exactly what I want and how to get it,” she says of her renewed focus in life. With a book and a lifestyle label in the works, it appears Lisa is ticking all the right boxes.

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