Lisa Ray

Past roles include a farm girl in All Hat, a school teacher in A Stone's Throw, and a housewife in 1950s-apartheid South Africa in The World Unseen. In 2008 Ray starred, alongside Sheetal Sheth and Amber Rose Revah, in the Shamim Sarif directed British romantic comedy I Can't Think Straight that went on to win awards in queer film festivals worldwide, including Dallas OUT TAKES, Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and Tampa International Gay and Lesbian Film festival.

Lisa Rani Ray (born 4 April 1972) is a Canadian actress.

She began her modelling career in India in the early 1990s, appearing for leading Indian brands like Bombay Dyeing and Lakmé.

She made her acting debut in 1994 in the film Hanste Khelte. Through her acting career, Ray has demonstrated a penchant for issue-oriented portrayals, most notably in the 2005 Oscar nominated Canadian film Water and the award-winning South African feature The World Unseen'', described by a reviewer as "one of the best-conceived queer films of the past year."

After turning down a number of roles, Ray made her Indian Film Industry debut in 2001 with the Hindi film Kasoor, opposite Aftab Shivdasani, in which her voice was dubbed by Divya Dutta, because she could not speak Hindi.

In spite of that, her performance received positive reviews.

Her work in the film also caught the eye of Deepa Mehta, who cast her in the romantic Indian-Canadian romp Bollywood/Hollywood in 2002.

Realizing that acting was something that she wanted to pursue more seriously, Ray moved to London to concentrate on a career in the performing arts.

While there, Ray studied at the Central School of Speech and Drama, the London Centre for Theatre Studies, the Desmond Jones school of Physical Theatre, and BADA.

She graduated from the Academy of Live and Recorded Arts (ALRA), in 2004, with a post-graduate degree in acting.

While studying, Ray made a conscious effort to not accept any film offers until she had graduated.

However, while still at ALRA, she received another call from Deepa Mehta, who made her an offer she simply could not refuse—the lead role of Kalyani in Mehta's much-anticipated, and eventually highly controversial, feature, Water.

In the film, Lisa spoke her lines in Hindi, although her voice was dubbed in the final cut.

After graduation, Ray based herself out of Milan, Paris, and New York from 2004 to 2008, returning to Toronto upon her mother's death in late 2008.

Water released in 2005 to both national and global critical acclaim, with the venerable Roger Ebert describing it as "lovely in the way Satyajit Ray's films are lovely",

Ray has since worked in productions from Canada, Europe, and the United States.

In 2007, Ray 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.

In 2009, Ray was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, an incurable form of blood cancer.

She began writing The Yellow Diaries, a blog about her experiences of having cancer.

Her writing and columns have since regularly appeared in multiple major publications.

Ray remains an active advocate of stem-cell therapy and has participated in several successful fundraisers and cancer awareness campaigns.

In 2011, Ray began hosting a popular travel show on Discovery Channel India alongside appearing as host and judge in Food Network's highest rated show, Top Chef Canada.

In 2016, Ray opened an Instagram account dedicated to poetry.

"I have come to recognise that every major turning point in my life is preceded by pain", she wrote in Femina in 2016.

As one of India's most successful cover models, Ray would subsequently lend her face to iconic global brands such as L’Oréal, MasterCard, De Beers and Rado.

A Times of India poll named her the "ninth most beautiful woman of the millennium," the only model in the top ten.

She co-anchored the TV show Star Biz on Star Movies and appeared in a music video for Afreen Afreen, an iconic ghazal written by renowned lyricist Javed Akhtar, and composed and performed by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.

In March 2019, Ray participated as a panelist on the 2019 edition of Canada Reads where she advocated for David Chariandy's award-winning second novel, Brother.

Ray was born in Toronto to a Bengali Hindu father and a Polish Catholic mother and grew up in the suburb of Etobicoke.

She spoke Polish with her maternal grandmother and watched movies of Federico Fellini and Satyajit Ray with her cinephile dad.

During her childhood she spent some time in Calcutta.

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.

Ray's modelling career began when she was "discovered" during a family vacation in India while still in her teens.

An advertisement for Bombay Dyeing where she appeared in a black swimsuit opposite Karan Kapoor earned Ray her first taste of public attention.

A subsequent meeting with Maureen Wadia, editor of Indian fashion magazine Gladrags, resulted in an iconic swimsuit cover that catapulted Ray to nationwide fame in India.

"Most of my most fulfilling professional moments came to me via serendipity", Ray later wrote.

By the time the Gladrags cover broke, Ray was already back in Toronto ready to begin university.

Her plans were thwarted after a tragic auto accident that would consign her mother to a wheelchair for the rest of her life.

Ray returned to India and went on to become one of the country's first supermodels, and the face of Lakmé and Bombay Dyeing.

Ray would later acknowledge this coinciding of professional triumph and personal tragedy as a recurring theme in her life.