Freida Pinto (born 18 October 1984) is an Indian actress and model best known for her portrayal of Latika in the 2008 Academy Award winning film Slumdog Millionaire, for which she won a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture. In 2010, she starred in the films You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger and as the title character in Miral, and in 2011, she starred in the box-office hit Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

Freida Pinto was born on 18 October 1984 a Mangalorean Catholic family in Mumbai, which she still refers to as Bombay out of habit. Her surname is Portuguese and Pinto has said that she probably has distant Portuguese ancestry. Her mother, Sylvia, is a principal of St John's Universal High School (Goregaon), and her father, Frederick, is a senior branch manager at the Bank of Baroda. Her older sister Sharon is an associate producer for the NDTV news channel. Pinto dreamed of becoming an actress since she was five years old. When Freida was ten, Sushmita Sen won Miss Universe 1994, which turned out to be a defining point in Freida's life. She studied at Carmel of St. Joseph School in Malad, Mumbai and completed her Bachelor of Arts (BA) with a major in English Literature, and minors in Psychology and Economics, from St. Xavier's College, Mumbai. She also acted in plays and amateur theatre while attending St. Xavier's. She later joined Elite Model Management and modelled for two and a half years.

Pinto has joined Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf to support their philanthropic organisation "Agassi Foundation". She is the only Indian actress to have participated in their annual fund raiser titled, "The 15th Grand Slam for Children", that aims at raising funds for education of underprivileged children.