Leela Naidu

Leela Naidu was born in Bombay (now Mumbai), India. Her father, Dr. Pattipati Ramaiah Naidu, a well known nuclear physicist, hailed from Madanapalle, Chittoor District, Andhra Pradesh, and had worked under the supervision of Nobel Laureate Marie Curie for his doctoral thesis in Paris. He ran one of Madame Curie's labs in Paris. He was Scientific Advisor to UNESCO for Southeast Asia, and later, an advisor to the Tata group. Her mother, journalist and Indologist, Dr. Marthe Mange Naidu, was of Swiss-French origin, from Pont d'Avignon, South-France and earned her PhD from the Sorbonne. Naidu was the only surviving child out of eight pregnancies as Marthe had seven miscarriages. Naidu enjoyed the advantages of birth and the connections of her parents. She grew up in Europe, went to an elite school in Geneva, Switzerland, and in her teens, took acting lessons from Jean Renoir. Leela met Salvador Dalí in Grand-hotel Opera, Paris where she posed for a painting of the Madonna. Leela Naidu was crowned Femina Miss India in 1954, and the same year was featured in Vogue magazine's list of the world's ten most beautiful women.