After her debut film
Mississippi Masala (1991)
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 (1991) 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 who is
raped in Bille August's adaptation of
Das Geisterhaus (1993),
and a lesbian mother in
Fresh Kill (1994).
Choudhury worked with
Mississippi Masala (1991)
director Mira Nair again in
Die Perez Familie (1995) and
played the cuckolded queen Tara in Nair's frankly-sensual feminist
parable
Kama Sutra - Die Kunst der Liebe (1996).
By the late 1990s, Choudhury added a touch of Hollywood to her
repertoire with supporting roles in the glossy
Alfred Hitchcock remake,
Ein perfekter Mord (1998) and the
John Cassavetes retread
Gloria (1999).
