woman in white; In Water, actress Lisa Ray proves she's not just another pretty face.(Brief article)

Byline: Daphne Beal

As the child of a Bengali father and a Polish mother in Toronto, Lisa Ray wasn't sure which culture she belonged to. So when, as a teenager on vacation in India, she was asked by an acquaintance if she wanted to model, her answer was yes. "Wanting to solve that problem of identity is what pushed me to India," she says. Her face quickly appeared on magazine covers and billboards, advertising everything from shampoo to diamonds. Ten years later, Ray went to London to study acting. She'd been in a couple of Bollywood films, but they weren't the meaty stuff she was after. "I was waiting for something, but I wasn't sure what," she says.

Then came the call from director Deepa Mehta, who asked her to read a script. A few pages in, Ray realized that it was in fact Mehta's highly ...