Sarita Choudhury

Sarita Choudhury
Choudhury at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival
Born	Sarita Catherine Louise Choudhury (1966-08-18) 18 August 1966 Blackheath, London, England
Nationality	British
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1990–present
Children	1

Sarita Catherine Louise Choudhury (born 18 August 1966) is an English actress, best known for her role in the Mira Nair-directed feature film Mississippi Masala (1992). In the late 1990s, Choudhury added to her repertoire with supporting roles in the thriller A Perfect Murder (1998), 3 A.M. (2001), and the John Cassavetes remake Gloria (1999). In 2002, she starred in Just a Kiss. She played a lesbian virgin in Spike Lee's She Hate Me (2004) and acted as Anna Ran in Lady in the Water, a 2006 thriller by M. Night Shyamalan. She also played Egeria in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 (2015) and co-starred with Tom Hanks in the 2016 film A Hologram for the King.

Early life

Choudhury was born in Blackheath, London, England, and is of half Indian Bengali and half British English descent. Her parents, Julia Patricia (née Spring) of English descent, and Prabhas Chandra Choudhury, a scientist of Indian Bengali descent, 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.

Career

Choudhury starred opposite Denzel Washington in the 1990 film Mississippi Masala, for which she received her Screen Actors Guild (SAG) card. She was still working as a waitress in Manhattan's East Village to make ends meet while the film was in theatres. After her debut film Mississippi Masala became an art house hit, Sarita Choudhury acted as a Pakistani country-western singer in Wild West (1992), a Chilean maid who is raped in Bille August's adaptation of The House of the Spirits, and a lesbian mother in Fresh Kill.

Choudhury appeared on Homicide: Life on the Street for five episodes during the 1998–99 season as Dr. Kalyani, a medical examiner. Choudhury 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 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." The film had a commercial release in September 2010.

She appears as character Saul Berenson's wife, Mira in the TV series Homeland. In 2011, she appeared in the joint British/French TV series Death in Paradise. Choudhury also had a brief cameo the 2013 comedy Admission. She appeared in the films The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 (2014) and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 (2015), as President Snow's assistant, Egeria. In 2015, she appears as the Deputy White House Political Director Sophia Varma in the American crime drama Blindspot.

Filmography

Film roles

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1991	Mississippi Masala	Meena
1992	Wild West	Rifat
1993	The House of the Spirits	Pancha Garcia
1994	Fresh Kill	Shareen Lightfoot
1995	The Perez Family	Josette
1996	Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love	Tara, the Queen
1997	Dinner Party	Rosie	Short film
1997	Story of the Red Rose	Infanta	Short film
1998	High Art	Joan	Uncredited
1998	A Perfect Murder	Raquel Martinez
1998	Restless	Jane Talwani
1999	Gloria	Angela
2000	Come On	Sarita
2001	3 A.M.	Box
2001	Trigger Happy	Alison
2002	Just a Kiss	Colleen
2002	Refuge	Girl
2003	Rhythm of the Saints	Mariela
2003	It Runs in the Family	Suzie
2004	Exactly	Lily	Short film
2004	Marmalade	Angela
2004	She Hate Me	Song
2004	The Breakup Artist	Mona
2004	Indocumentados	Mrs. Guerrero
2005	The War Within	Farida S. Choudhury
2005	L'est de la brúixola	Dabashree
2006	Lady in the Water	Anna Ran
2006	Lady in a Box	Ms. Pullman	Short film
2008	Woman in Burka	Sarita	Short film
2008	The Accidental Husband	Sunny
2009	Entre nos	Preet
2009	For Real	Priya
2009	Coup de Grâce		Short film
2011	Aazaan	Menon
2012	Gayby	Ushma
2012	Generation Um...	Lily
2012	Midnight's Children	Prime Minister
2012	BMW: Bombay's Most Wanted
2012	Monarchs and Men	Nadzia	Short film
2013	Admission	Rachel
2013	Innocence	Dr. Vera Kent
2013	Give Into the Night	Veena	Short film
2014	The Disinherited	Anna
2014	Learning To Drive	Jasleen
2014	The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1	Egeria
2014	Roman Buildings	Sarita
2015	Love Comes Later		Short film
2015	The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2	Egeria
2015	Sweets	Sweets
2016	A Hologram for the King	Zahra
2016	Wake O Wake	Lila	Short film
2017	The Last Photograph	Hannah
2017	After Louie	Maggie
2019	Human Terrain	Adelah Nasser	Short film
2020	Evil Eye	Usha Kharti
2020	It Snows in Benidorm	Alex
2021	After Yang	Cleo
2021	The Green Knight	Morgan le Fey

Television roles

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1995	Down Came a Blackbird	Myrna	TV Movie
1997	Subway Stories	Humera	TV Movie; Segment: "Honey-Getter"
1998–1999	Homicide: Life on the Street	Dr. Kalyani	Recurring
2000–2001	Deadline	Sahira Ondaatje	3 episodes
2001–2002	100 Centre Street	Julia Brooks	Recurring
2004	Law & Order	Nadira Harrington	Episode: "Paradigm"
2004	PBS Hollywood Presents	Charmaine	Episode: "Cop Shop"
2007	Damages	Sleep Therapist	Episode: "She Spat at Me"
2009	Kings	Helen Pardis	Recurring
2009	The Philanthropist	Rhada Shivpuri	Episode: "Kashmir"
2009	Possible Side Effects	Callie	TV Movie
2010	Mercy	Dr. Carrozzi	Episode: "Wake Up, Bill"
2010	The Good Wife	Simran Verma	Episode: "Mock"
2010	Bored to Death	Lakshmi	Episode: "Forty-Two Down!"
2011	Bar Karma	Sarita	Episode: "Man Walks Out of a Bar"
2011	Death in Paradise	Avita	Episode: "Music of Murder"
2011–2017	Homeland	Mira Berenson	Recurring
2015–2016	Blindspot	Sofia Varma	Recurring
2016	Elementary	Gira Pal	Episode: "A Study in Charlotte"
2016	Divorce	Courtney	Episode: "Church"
2016	Recon	Farrah	TV Pilot
2016–2017	Madam Secretary	Prime Minister Jaya Verma	2 episodes
2018	The Path	Lilith	Main cast (Season 3)
2018	Instinct	Mayor Myers	2 episodes
2018	Strangers		3 episodes
2019	Jessica Jones	Kith Lyonne	Main cast (Season 3)
2020	Mira, Royal Detective	Great-Aunt Rupa (voice)
2020	Little Fires Everywhere	Anita Rees	3 episodes
2021	Law and Order: Special Victims Unit	Vanessa Blake	Episode "In the Year We All Fell Down" (Season 22, Episode 12)
2021	And Just Like That...	Seema Patel

External links

• Sarita Choudhury on IMDb
• Rediff nterview
• Heyoka Magazine nterview with John LeKay