After her debut film "The Mississippi Masala (1992)" became an art house hit, Sarita Choudhury was determined not to "go Hollywood", focusing her acting energies on independent film instead. Raised in Jamaica, Mexico, and Italy, the half-Indian, half-English Choudhury studied economics at Queens University in Ontario before switching to acting. She casually auditioned for Mississippi Masala and wo ...  show all 

After her debut film "The Mississippi Masala (1992)" became an art house hit, Sarita Choudhury was determined not to "go Hollywood", focusing her acting energies on independent film instead. Raised in Jamaica, Mexico, and Italy, the half-Indian, half-English Choudhury studied economics at Queens University in Ontario before switching to acting. She casually auditioned for Mississippi Masala and wound up cast as the lead opposite Denzel Washington in the singular interracial romance between a Southern African American man and a transplanted Indian woman. Despite the film's surprise success, Choudhury stuck to her non-Hollywood roots, putting her exotic looks and talent to versatile use as a Pakistani country-western singer in "Wild West (1992)", a Chilean maid in Bille August's adaptation of "House of the Spirits (1993)", and a lesbian mother in "The Fresh Kill (1994)". Choudhury worked with Mississippi Masala director Mira Nair again in "Perez Family (1995)" and played the cuckolded queen Tara in Nair's frankly-sensual feminist parable "Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love (1996)". By the late 1990s, Choudhury added a touch of Hollywood to her repertoire with supporting roles in the glossy Hitchcock remake, "Perfect Murder, A (1998)" and the John Cassavetes retread "Gloria (1999)".
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