Personal life
She was born
Madhur Bahadur in Delhi, British India and was educated at Miranda House (of the University of Delhi). After college, she worked for All India Radio. She then attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, from which she graduated with honors in 1957. She then met and married Indian actor Saeed Jaffrey and moved to New York City. She and Saeed divorced in 1965. They have three daughters, Meera, Zia and Sakina Jaffrey. In 1969, she married Sanford Allen, a violinist with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.. She is the aunt of the British journalists Rohit Jaggi and his sister the literary critic Maya Jaggi (their mother Lalit being one of Madhur's older sisters).
Merchant Ivory films
Madhur Jaffrey is said to have been responsible for introducing James Ivory and Ismail Merchant. She appeared in a number of their earlier films:
Shakespeare Wallah (1965) (a role for which she won the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the 15th Berlin International Film Festival),
The Guru (1969),
Autobiography of a Princess, (1976)
Heat and Dust (1983), directed by Ivory, and
The Perfect Murder (1988). She starred as the title character in their film
Cotton Mary (1999) and co-directed it with Merchant.
Other films and TV
She has appeared in
Six Degrees of Separation (1993),
Vanya on 42nd Street (1994) and
Prime (2005). She starred in and produced
ABCD (1999) and guest-starred in the
Special Victims Unit episode "Name" as a psychiatrist, and the
Criminal Intent episode "The Healer" as a lecturer. In 1985, she was in the Hindi film
Saagar where she played the role of Rishi Kapoor's grandmother. In 1999, she appeared with daughter Sakina Jaffrey in the film
Chutney Popcorn. In 2003, she played Roshan Seth's wife in
Cosmopolitan, a film broadcast on PBS.
Theatre
In 1962, she appeared in
A Tenth of an Inch Makes the Difference by Rolf Forsberg. In 1969, she appeared in
The Guide, based on the novel by R. K. Narayan, and in 1970, she appeared in
Conduct Unbecoming, written by Barry England. In 1993, she appeared in
Two Rooms by Lee Blessing.In 1999, she appeared in
Last Dance at Dum Dum by Ayub Khan-Din. In 2004, Jaffrey appeared in
Bombay Dreams on Broadway where she played the main character's grandmother (Shanti). In 2005, she appeared in
India Awakening by Anne Marie Cummings.
Cooking
Jaffrey is the noted author of cookbooks of Indian, Asian, and world vegetarian cuisines, many of which have become bestsellers and several of which have won James Beard Foundation awards. She has presented several cookery series on television, including
Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cookery in 1982,
Madhur Jaffrey's Far Eastern Cookery in 1989 and
Madhur Jaffrey's Flavours of India in 1995. Jaffrey, Madhur She lives in Manhattan and has a home in upstate New York. Due to the success of her cookbooks and TV, Jaffrey also developed a line of mass-marketed cooking sauces.
Ironically, she did not cook at all as a child growing up in Delhi. She had almost never been in the kitchen and almost failed cooking at school. It was only after she went to London at the age of 19 to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art that she learned how to cook, using recipes of familiar dishes that were provided in correspondence from her mother. In the 1960s, after her award-winning performance in
Shakespeare Wallah, she became known as the "actress who could cook" and was hired by the BBC to present a show on Indian cooking. After an article about her and her cooking appeared in the
New York Times in 1966, she received a book contract that produced
An Invitation to Indian Cooking, her first book. The recipes in that book came from her mother, although she adapted them for the American kitchen. During the 1970s, she taught classes in Indian cooking, both at the James A. Beard School of Cooking and in her Manhattan apartment. In 1986, the restaurant Dawat opened in Manhattan using recipes provided by her.
Awards
- Best Actress Award from the Berlin Film Festival in 1965 for her performance in Shakespeare Wallah
- Taraknath Das Foundation Award presented by the Taraknath Das Foundation of the Southern Asian Institute of Columbia University in 1993 Southern Asian Institute | About the Taraknath Das Foundation
- Named to Who's Who of Food and Beverage in America by the James Beard Foundation in 1995. Welcome to the James Beard Foundation
- Muse Award presented by New York Women in Film & Television in 2000. New York Women in Film and Television
- Honorary CBE awarded on 11 October 2004 "in recognition of her services to cultural relations between the United Kingdom, India and the United States, through her achievements in film, television and cookery". Madhur Jaffrey Made Honorary Commander of the British Empire
