| Sarita Choudhury | |
|---|---|
Choudhury at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival |
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| Born | Sarita Catherine Louise Choudhury 18 August 1966 Blackheath, London, England |
Sarita Catherine Louise Choudhury (born 18 August 1966) is an English actress.
Choudhury was born in Blackheath, London, England, of half Bengali-Indian and half English descent. Her parents, Prabhas Chandra Choudhury, a scientist, and Julia Patricia Spring, married in 1964 in Lucea, Jamaica. She studied Economics and film at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. She has one younger brother, Kumar Michael Choudhury, and one older brother, Chandra Paul Choudhury.
She is best known for her roles in the Mira Nair-directed feature films Mississippi Masala (1992), The Perez Family (1995) and Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love (1996).
After her debut film Mississippi Masala became an art house hit, Sarita Choudhury acted as a Pakistani country-western singer in Wild West, a Chilean maid who is raped in Bille August's adaptation of The House of the Spirits, and a lesbian mother in Fresh Kill.
By the late 1990s, Choudhury added to her repertoire with supporting roles in the glossy Hitchcock remake, A Perfect Murder and the John Cassavetes retread Gloria. In 2002 she starred in Just a Kiss. She played a lesbian virgin in Spike Lee's She Hate Me and acted as Anna Ran in Lady in the Water, a 2006 thriller/fantasy film written, produced, and directed by M. Night Shyamalan.
She appeared on Homicide: Life on the Streets for five episodes during the 1998-1999 season as Dr. Kalyani, a medical examiner.
Choudhury most recently played the role of the King's mistress, Helen Pardis, in the NBC drama Kings. The series was based upon the Biblical story of King David but set in modern times. Her character's Biblical counterpart was Rizpah, a concubine of King Saul.
She recently worked with independent film director Sona Jain in For Real. In an interview with The Statesman she said, "After Mississippi Masala and Kama Sutra I started getting offers in New York... doing theatres... I just went with the flow. One fine day, I thought that I haven’t been back to India, haven’t shot there and that’s something I wanted to. There were Bollywood offers but it was not until Sona’s script that made me look at India."[1] The film had a commercial release in September 2010.
She appears as character Saul Berenson's wife in Homeland (TV series).
In 2011 she appeared in the joint British/French TV series Death in Paradise (TV series).