Preeya Kalidas

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Preeya Kalidas (born 1980) is a British actress and musical theatre performer.

Born in Twickenham, Middlesex, she started ballet classes at the age of three and tap at five, and then trained at the Sylvia Young Theatre School in London.^[1]

After a number of parts in films and on television, including East is East,The Bill, My Family and Casualty, in 2002 she appeared as Monica in Gurinder Chadha's film Bend It Like Beckham before being cast in the Andrew Lloyd Webber-produced Bollywood-style musical written by Indian movie composer A.R. Rahman, Meera Syal and Don Black, Bombay Dreams, in which she played the female lead, Priya.[1]

She then appeared in the BBC series Bodies as Dr. Maya Dutta, and in 2007, she landed the female lead in a West End revival of Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Appearing as the narrator, she will perform with Lee Mead, who won the title role of Joseph in BBC One's Any Dream Will Do talent search series. In an interview, she said of Mead "...I noticed Lee from his first audition [for the series] and thought he was fantastic. Joseph has to have vulnerability about him because you see his journey from a young boy to a man. Lee has those qualities of innocence."^[2]

She was "ecstatic" to have landed the female lead in the 2007 revival of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat after composer/producer Andrew Lloyd Webber invited her to audition, she told London's Evening Standard on 18 June 2007.[2] "It's great to have the opportunity to be in something where it's not specifically for an Asian girl."

She had watched the series in which viewers chose Mead as her leading man, she said. "Of course. I was going to be working with the person who was going to be Joseph. I think the best man won."