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. "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. 2001–2009 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. Water released