I went to Brunel University and very much wanted to go on to do a PhD in management, but then my acting career started to take off. In those days when you switched on the box there were hardly any brown or black faces.
My mother told me not to listen to anyone. She had been told that she wouldn't be able to teach and she did.
I have been extremely proactive in putting myself up for characters that may have been meant to specifically be Caucasian. You bring an interesting angle to the character that isn't written.
I had a dialect coach to get an American accent, and then another dialect coach to come off it a bit. There is something deep and mysterious in the voice when it isn't too high-pitched American.
The generation that migrated to the West in the 1970s or 1960s has now lived more in the West than India, and India has changed so much. My parents fall into that category.
I feel like I have one foot in New York, one foot in London and one foot in India. But it's important to me to invest time with family.
I am still married, yes - no children. I have Benzo, though; he's my dog, a Lhasa apso.
I like to cook Indian food when I can. I find the process of creating a home-cooked meal to be unwinding.
At the end of the week, it's nice to just hang out in a pair of jeans and let my hair down. I need a break from all that fashion!
I like to do new things, so I always take on roles that I feel will keep me on my toes. I never want to pigeon myself, so I always like to surprise myself. I believe in versatility and so I would play anything as long as it was a challenge.
When I started out in the '90s, there were not many people of color writing, directing and producing - hence, the roles for people of color were few and far between. There's still few roles in England [where she's from].
I loved eating and I did put on weight. I never actually felt fat until I started going for castings, for auditions.
I'd love to do a romantic comedy. And perhaps, if the character was right and I had a good gut instinct, a Bollywood movie. And I'd love to direct. One day. I'm learning a lot on the set of 'The Good Wife.'
Coming to New York is like a big hug, everyone is so welcoming. There's something about here, everyone makes you feel so at home. I miss my family of course, but I don't miss London that much. I was worried, but I feel really at home. Everyone says that who comes here from London, but I didn't believe them.
I knew from a young age that I wanted to be an actor. I never even thought about other careers. The acting field is certainly not the path many Indian parents encourage their children to take, but mine were very supportive. They wanted me to have an education, but understood that this is what I wanted to do.
I knew what I wanted to do for my entire life, from nursery to university. I've always been geared towards wanting to act. I've stuck with it, dedicated time to it.
You have this impression from England that New Yorkers can be quite aggressive, but certainly the people that I've bumped into and the friends I've made here don't seem that way. Just walking down the street and asking for directions, people seem to be very helpful and happy to help.
I'd love to say I made the smart decision of picking projects that became hits, but with 'The Good Wife,' I read the script and something inside me said, 'I love this, I want to do this.'
My mother wanted to be a teacher when she was young, and my father didn't approve of it, so she fought very hard to become one. And she did it. So when I said I wanted to become an actress, my mother was very supportive. She always said to me, 'There's no such thing as 'can't.
Since I was a baby my goal was to be on TV because film was just impossible - you never got any Asian women in Western cinema. I grew up wanting to be in 'East-Enders' because film wasn't even a dream. The community were very much like, 'How can you want to act? It's such a low-class profession.
As soon as I moved to New York, I experienced Hurricane Irene and then Hurricane Sandy hit me in quite a big way. I had 12 days without any electricity or any water. The thing that I realized the most from it was that we've become so dependent on technology. There's so much accessibility to information that suddenly when everything is cut off, you're completely lost, and you start asking deeper and more profound questions - how short life is, and how grateful we should be for things.
There is a big misconception about arranged marriage. Yes, it can mean that you meet someone and then have to marry them, but this was my mother saying, 'I'm going to introduce you to so-and-so - If you don't like them, fair enough.
I've always been quite psychic and believe there's a reason why things happen and that we need to learn from them.
You can have all the agents and publicists in the world but no one's ever going to give you 110 per cent like someone who loves you.
When I was younger I was fat. I was never conscious of it and was content with who I was because I was so loved. My mother never told me to lose weight and my father doted on me, but my agent told me. I tried, but I loved Indian food too much.
