The first Oscar-nominated Indian actress passed as white, and later on, a different Indian actress—more of an indie starlet—ended up being more famous for her cookbooks.
Dev Patel is the third actor of Indian origin to be nominated for an Oscar. The first was half-Sri Lankan (then Ceylonese) Merle Oberon, who refused to appear on camera without makeup. Retrospect explains why. Her history was edited: "'Estelle Thompson from Bombay became Merle Oberon, a white upper class Hobart girl who moves to India from Tasmania after her distinguished father dies in a hunting accident.'"
Before she became the face of Indian home cooking, Madhur Jaffrey attended London’s prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and won the Best Actress award at the Berlin Film Festival for her role in Merchant-Ivory's Shakespeare Wallah. But, writes Mayukh Sen after an interview, Jaffrey became more marketable in a different role: "that of the strenuously kind woman who can teach you how to make curry."