padma lakshmi is HOT

Padma Lakshmi is not only the sultry host of season two and season three of Top Chef on Bravo, she is also a model, a cookbook author, and a movie star. Even if you are a fan of Top Chef there are some facts about Padma Lakshmi which may surprise and delight you.

Jewelry Designer?

Padma Lakshmi has a line of jewelry coming out, which includes bold cuffs, according to the October 2007 issues of Self magazine. She is quoted as saying, "There is something tribal and powerful" about wearing the cuff bracelets.

The scar on Padma Lakshmi's arm is from surgery she had after a car accident when she was 14. She mentioned this on the season three special of TC, as it was a viewer question. Web searches about her scar are also popular.

Padma Lakshmi's favorite part of her body may be surprising – it's the seven-inch scar on her forearm from a car accident at the age of 14.

"I love it because it makes me a person who has an interesting past, and it reminds me that I can survive any pain," the Top Chef host admits in May's annual nude issue of Allure magazine, on sale April 21.

Lakshmi, 38, and four other Hollywood personalities stripped down for the feature. The cookbook-author and model says she has no problem being photographed in such a way. "I didn't feel any more naked without my robe. I don't have any stigma attached to my body. When I'm in my own private space, I have very little on," says. Lakshmi.

Natural beauty Padma Lakshmi has been vocal about loving her post-baby curves and is proud of what her body has created. That same self-confidence transfers to the Vogue India cover girl proudly revealing her extensive scar on national television.

The Top Chef host tells the fashion magazine, "My body is a blueprint of my life, of every tragedy — emotional or physical." When Padma was 14, she was involved in a car crash in Malibu that left her with a seven-inch-long scar on her arm. Back in 2001, she wrote an essay for US Vogue detailing flying off a freeway in her family's red Ford Mercury sedan and falling 40 feet down an embankment. "An ambulance carried me to the hospital. My right arm had been shattered and my right hip had been fractured. After surgery, I regained the use of both of them but was left with a long scar on my arm. It was half an inch wide and seven inches long."