Parminder Nagra

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Parminder Nagra
Born	Parminder Kaur Nagra October 5, 1975 (1975-10-05) (age 34) Leicester, United Kingdom
Spouse(s)	James Stenson (2009 - present)

Parminder Kaur Nagra (born 5 October 1975) is an English actress. She came to international prominence in 2002 after starring in Bend It Like Beckham. More recently she starred as Dr. Neela Rasgotra in the Emmy Award-winning American medical drama series ER. She is married to photographer James Stenson and has one child.

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Early life 1.2 The London years 1.3 Bend It Like Beckham 1.4 Beyond Bend It 1.5 Hollywood 1.6 Personal life 2 Filmography 3 Awards 4 References 5 External links

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life

Nagra was born in Leicester, England, the daughter of working class Punjabi Sikh parents who emigrated to the UK from the Punjab state in India during the late 1960s. Her father, Sukha, was a factory worker who is believed to have separated from her mother, Nashuter, when either Nagra was a child shortly before her; he died in late December 2008.^{[citation needed]} Nagra has two younger brothers and one younger sister. They were raised in a small terraced house in the Belgrave district of Leicester by her mother and stepfather, who worked as a bookkeeper at a cousin's transport company.^{[citation needed]}

At the age of seven, Nagra suffered a burn while preparing a meal on the gas stove when her trousers caught fire. She was taken into the bathroom by an uncle who immersed her in cold water. When the burned fabric was later removed, her skin attached to it and left a resulting scar on her right leg. The story was included into the film Bend It Like Beckham; however, the details were changed such that her character was burned while making beans on toast.^{[citation needed]}

Nagra attended the Northfield House Primary School in Leicester. At her comprehensive school, Soar Valley College, she played viola in the youth orchestra and also appeared in her first theatrical productions.^{[citation needed]} A few months after sitting her A-levels and leaving school, Nagra was approached by her former drama instructor, Jez Simons, about becoming part of the Leicester-based theatre company Hathi Productions, for which he served as the artistic director.^{[citation needed]} She accepted and was cast as a chorus member in the 1994 musical Nimai presented at the Leicester Haymarket. Only a week into rehearsals, she was switched from the chorus to take the place of the lead actress, who had dropped out.^{[citation needed]} Simons recalls that Nagra, while also a good singer and actress, had a quality that raised her above other actresses which led him to select her as the new lead.^{[citation needed]} Nagra sometimes describes herself as having "fallen into" acting due to this unexpected turn of events.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] The London years

Nagra left Leicester for London, forgoing university to pursue a theatrical career and her childhood ambition of becoming an actress.^{[citation needed]} Nagra's first London theatrical job came in 1994^{[citation needed]} when she was cast as the Princess in the pantomime Sleeping Beauty, at the Theatre Royal Stratford East. Although most critics^[who?] seemed rather unimpressed with the show, Nagra's performance is notable in that she was a woman of colour portraying a traditionally white character.^{[citation needed]} After Sleeping Beauty, Nagra worked with small Indian theatre companies such as Tara Arts and Tamasha. These roles eventually led to the radio and television appearances that also defined her career throughout most of the 1990s.

In 1996, Nagra took a small part in Fair Ladies at a Game of Poem Cards, written by Chikamatsu Monzaemon and performed at Cottesloe, Royal National Theatre. It was there that she met Irish actor Kieran Creggan, with whom she later moved into a flat in Kennington, south London. Their relationship continued for five years.^{[citation needed]}

Although lacking formal theatrical training, Nagra signed with veteran London-based agent Joan Brown,^{[citation needed]} after which she was cast in her first television roles — a bit part on the British medical drama Casualty, and a small role in the television movie King Girl, in which Nagra played an abusive member of a girls' gang. In 1997, Nagra appeared in the three-part drama Turning World, starring Roshan Seth. The following year she appeared on Casualty for the second time. In 1999 she played the part of a convenience store clerk in the television movie Donovan Quick, starring Colin Firth. Also of note are appearances on the British comedy show Goodness Gracious Me. Nagra also starred in radio plays written including, amongst other, plays written by noted author and playwright Tanika Gupta. In 1998, Nagra was part of Dancing Girls of Lahore, a radio play co-written by her future Bend It Like Beckham co-star, Shaheen Khan. In 2001, Nagra provided the voice of a Muslim girl in Arena: The Veil, a docu-drama about women who choose to wear the Muslim head scarf. Her stage performances of this period are perhaps the most noteworthy. Not long after Fair Ladies at a Game of Poem Cards, Nagra was cast in 1997's Oh Sweet Sita, an adaptation of Indian mythology about Rama and his wife Sita.^{[citation needed]} Starring in the title role of Sita, Nagra caught the attention of director Gurinder Chadha.

Nagra's other notable stage roles during this period are many and include appearances in Skeleton (1997), with critical acclaim for her "bright-eyed vivacity"^{[citation needed]} as the village girl; A Tainted Dawn (1997), playing a Hindu boy accidentally left in Pakistan and raised by a Muslim couple; Fourteen Songs, Two Weddings & A Funeral (1998), showing her skills as a romantic comedienne, also to critical acclaim;^{[citation needed]} Krishna's Lila — A Play of the Asian World (1999), as part of a five-person cast in a controversially titled piece;^{[citation needed]} The Square Circle (1999), tackling the demanding role of an illiterate peasant girl who becomes a rape victim;^{[citation needed]} and in River on Fire (2000), as Kiran, in a retelling of Sophocles' Antigone.

[edit] Bend It Like Beckham

Bend It Like Beckham was Nagra's breakthrough film. It was directed by British director Gurinder Chadha and also starred Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Anupam Kher, Shaheen Khan and Keira Knightley, for whom this film was also a career breakthrough. In the film, Nagra plays Jesminder (Jess) Bhamra, a teenage Sikh football player who idolizes football superstar David Beckham and defies her traditional parents to pursue her dreams of playing football.

The small-budget picture was a critical and financial success in the United Kingdom, eventually making the leap around the world and to Canada and the U.S. where it earned over $30 million at the box office.^{[citation needed]} The script, conceived by Chadha with her husband Paul Mayeda Berges and Guljit Bindra, was written with Nagra in mind.^{[citation needed]} While initially indifferent to the game of football, Nagra found the football-centred story to be both funny and touching.^{[citation needed]} She agreed to audition and eventually accepted the role. An intensive ten-week training course of the game Futsal, led by noted coach Simon Clifford, put Nagra through rigorous nine-hour-a-day workouts.^{[citation needed]} Nagra learned to "bend" or curve the ball in flight, as she did in a scene in the film. In a nod to Nagra's actual life, director Chadha wrote and incorporated a scene about Nagra's scar into the film.^{[citation needed]}

Nagra received critical and professional acclaim for her performance. She was nominated, and won, several awards, including the FIFA Presidential Award (2002), the first woman to have done so.^[1].

[edit] Beyond Bend It

Nagra appeared in another film not long after filming ended on Bend It Like Beckham, playing Areida, a friend of Anne Hathaway's title character, in Ella Enchanted. In addition, Nagra took on two notable television roles for Channel 4—as Viola/Cesario in a multicultural version of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, and as Heere Sharma in the two-part Anglo-Indian drama Second Generation, loosely based on the Shakespeare's King Lear , directed by Jon Sen and starring Om Puri.

Although Second Generation was a ratings flop, it was a huge critical success, earning a place in The Observer newspaper's top 10 British TV programmes of 2003.^{[citation needed]} It garnered Nagra an Ethnic Multicultural Media Academy (EMMA) Award.^{[citation needed]} For the role, Nagra had to muster up the courage to do some of the love scenes that she had vowed not to do as an actress.^{[citation needed]} Filming the final scenes in Calcutta was Nagra's first visit to India.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Hollywood

While on a promotional junket in Los Angeles for Bend It Like Beckham, Nagra was informed by her agent that ER producer John Wells was interested in meeting with her.^{[citation needed]} Director Gurinder Chadha claimed during a 2007 episode of BBC's Movie Connections that this meeting was her doing, because she had recommended Parminder for the role of the new Indian character in ER during a conversation with her friend Wells.^{[citation needed]}

At their initial meeting, Wells made Nagra an offer to join the ensemble cast; she accepted immediately. In recalling the moment, she said, "I had to sit still and act professional, while all the time I just wanted to jump up and run around the room screaming".^{[citation needed]} Not long after the meeting, Nagra signed a one-year contract that included an option for three additional years. Despite her new status, Nagra said, "I don't think Hollywood has changed me at all. The first thing I did when I arrived was buy chapati flour and lentils".^{[citation needed]}

Nagra made her first ER appearance as County General Hospital medical intern Neela Rasgotra on 25 September 2003, in season 10's premiere episode entitled, "Now What?". Wells adapted the character to suit Nagra, which was allowed to act with her own English accent in portraying the Yale-educated Anglo-Indian Neela. Nagra would go on to appear in 21 of the season's 22 episodes, including "NICU" and "The Student", episodes in which her character was a central player. Noah Wyle, on announcing his departure from the series, described Nagra as "the future" of ER,^[2] and the media has concurred, anointing her as one of the show's "golden girls".^{[citation needed]} Following the departure of Maura Tierney, Nagra was the female lead of ER for the remainder of the series.

Nagra had the honor of being a torch bearer as the Olympic torch passed through London on its way to the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens.^[3] Nagra finished filming season 11 of ER later in 2005 and returned to her native Leicester to work on director Amit Gupta's Love in Little India^[4] in which she was cast as the female lead. She was nominated in 2006 for an Asian Excellence Award, in the category of Outstanding Female Television Performance, for her work in ER; she won the award the following year.^[5] Parminder Nagra was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctors of Letters by the University of Leicester on 11 July 2007.^[6]

Parminder Nagra was cast as Cassandra in the DC animated movie Batman: Gotham Knight (2008), which was produced by Bruce Timm, who also produced the Emmy-Award winning Batman: The Animated Series, the star of which, Kevin Conroy, reprised his role of Batman for the film.

[edit] Personal life

On 17 January 2009 Nagra married her boyfriend of seven years James Stenson, a photographer. The couple had two ceremonies: a civil one and a Sikh one. ER castmates Scott Grimes (Dr. Morris) performed at the reception along with John Stamos (Dr. Gates) on drums; former ER castmate and friend, Maura Tierney officiated over the ceremony.^[7] Their first child, a boy named Kai David Singh Stenson, was born on 19 May 2009.^[8].

[edit] Filmography

• Compulsion (2008) as Anjika Indrani
• Batman: Gotham Knight (2008) as Cassandra (voice)
• In Your Dreams (2007) as Charlie
• Maya the Indian Princess (2005) (voice)
• Ella Enchanted (2004) as Areida
• Second Generation (2003) as Heere/Sonali Sharma
• Twelfth Night (2003) as Viola
• ER (2003-2009, 129 episodes) as Dr. Neela Rasgotra
• Always and Everyone (2002, 1 episode) as Sunita Verma
• Bend It Like Beckham (2002) as Jesminder 'Jess' Bhamra
• The Swap (2002) as Hotel Receptionist
• Judge John Deed (2001, 1 episode) as Ishbel McDonald
• Holby City (2000, 1 episode) as Tina
• Donovan Quick (1999) as Radhika
• Park Stories (1999)
• Casualty (1998, 1 episode) as Asha Guptah
• Goodness Gracious Me (1998) in various roles
• Turning World (1997, 3 episodes) as Sabina
• King Girl (1996) as Ayshe
• Casualty (1996, 1 episode) as Ayisha
• Dushmani Jattan Di (1991)

[edit] Awards

Organisation	Year	Result	Award/Category	For
Asian Excellence Awards	2008	Nominated	Outstanding television actress	ER
Asian Excellence Awards	2007	Won	Outstanding television actress	ER
Morgan Stanley Great Britons Awards	2006	Nominated	Arts
South Asian Students' Alliance	2005	Won	Recognition of Excellence Award Outstanding Achievement in Acting (Female)	ER
Teen Choice Awards	2004	Nominated	Choice Breakout TV Star - Female	ER
Ethnic Multicultural Media Awards	2004	Won	Best Television Actress	Second Generation (2003)
Movieline Young Hollywood Awards	2004	Won	Breakthrough Performance by a Female	Bend It Like Beckham (2002)
Internet Movie Awards	2004	Nominated	Best Breakthrough Performance	Bend It Like Beckham (2002)
Empire Awards	2003	Nominated	Best Newcomer	Bend It Like Beckham (2002)
7th Annual Hollywood Film Festival Awards	2003	Nominated	Hollywood Actress of the Year	Bend It Like Beckham (2002)
Ethnic Multicultural Media Awards	2003	Nominated	Best Actress (Film)	Bend It Like Beckham (2002)
Federation Internationale de Football Association	2002	Won	FIFA Presidential Award	Bend It Like Beckham (2002)
Bordeaux International Festival of Women in Cinema	2002	Won	Golden Wave Best Actress (Meilleure Comédienne Long Métrage)	Bend It Like Beckham (2002) Tied with Keira Knightley
British Independent Film Awards	2002	Nominated	Most Promising Newcomer	Bend It Like Beckham (2002)
European Film Awards	2002	Nominated	Audience Award Best Actress	Bend It Like Beckham (2002)
Carlton Multicultural Achievement Awards	2002	Nominated	Film	Bend It Like Beckham (2002)

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Parminder Nagra at the Internet Movie Database
• NBC's ER website
• Parminder Nagra Online (fansite)
• Interview in the Leicester Mercury