Lisa Ray is a Canadian actress and former fashion model. She was diagnosed with multiple myeloma on 23 June 2009 and started her first cycle of treatment on 2 July 2009. In April 2010, she announced she was cancer-free following a stem cell transplant.

Lisa Ray was born in Toronto to an Indian father and a Polish mother and grew up in the suburb of Etobicoke. 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.

She spoke Polish to her maternal grandmother and watched movies of Federico Fellini and Satyajit Ray with her cinephile dad. Ray was spotted by an agent in a crowd during a family vacation in India when she was 16, when she began modeling.