Parminder Nagra Biography

Parminder Kaur Nagra (born 5 October 1975) is a British film and television actress. She played Jess in the 2002 film Bend It Like Beckham, Dr Neela Rasgotra in the medical drama series ER and Dr Lucy Banerjee in the Fox television series Alcatraz. She currently has a recurring role as Rachel in the television series Psych.

Early life

Parminder Kaur Nagra was born in Leicester, UK as the eldest child of Sukha and Nashuter Nagra, Sikh factory workers who emigrated from the Punjab region of India in the 1960s. 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. 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 Haithizi Productions, for which he served as the artistic director. 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 replace the lead actress, who had dropped out. 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.

Career

1990s to early 2000s

Nagra left Leicester for London, forgoing university to pursue a theatrical career and her childhood ambition of becoming an actress. Nagra's first London theatrical job came in 1994 when she was cast as the Princess in the pantomime Sleeping Beauty, at the Theatre Royal Stratford East. 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. She also appeared in "The 6th wonder of the World: the Kali Tutti Story", in 1994. 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.

Although lacking formal theatrical training, Nagra signed with veteran London-based agent Joan Brown, 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 film 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. 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" as the village girl; A Tainted Dawn (1997), playing a Hindu boy accidentally left in Pakistan and brought up by a Muslim couple; Fourteen Songs, Two Weddings & A Funeral (1998), showing her skills as a romantic comedienne, also to critical acclaim; Krishna's Lila "? A Play of the Asian World (1999), as part of a five-person cast in a controversially titled piece; The Square Circle (1999), tackling the demanding role of an illiterate peasant girl who becomes a rape victim; and in River on Fire (2000), as Kiran, in a retelling of Sophocles' Antigone. 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. Starring in the title role of Sita, Nagra caught the attention of director Gurinder Chadha.

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. The script, conceived by Chadha with her husband Paul Mayeda Berges and Guljit Bindra, was written with Nagra in mind. While initially indifferent to the game of football, Nagra found the football-centred story to be both funny and touching. She agreed to audition and eventually accepted the role. An intensive ten-week training course of the game Futebol De Salao, led by noted coach Simon Clifford, put Nagra through rigorous nine-hour-a-day workouts. 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.

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.

2004"present

Nagra appeared in another film not long after filming ended on Bend It Like Beckham, Nagra portrayed Areida, the best 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 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. It garnered Nagra an Ethnic Multicultural Media Academy (EMMA) Award. 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. Filming the final scenes in Calcutta was Nagra's first visit to India.

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. Director Gurinder Chadha claimed during a 2007 episode of BBC's Movie Connections that she arranged the meeting, because she had recommended Nagra for the role of the new Indian character in ER during a conversation with her friend Wells. 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". 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".

Nagra made her first ER appearance as County General Hospital medical student Neela Rasgotra on 25 September 2003, in the tenth season premiere entitled, "Now What?". Wells adapted the character to suit Nagra, so she could act with her own English accent in portraying the Yale-educated Anglo-Indian Neela Rasgotra. Nagra would go on to appear in twenty-one of the season's twenty-two episodes, including season 10: episode 12 called "NICU" and season 10: episode 17 called "The Student", episodes in which her character played a central role. Noah Wyle, on announcing his departure from the series, described Nagra as "the future" of ER, and the media has concurred, anointing her as one of the show's "golden girls". From season 15: episode 4 called "Parental Guidance", following the departures of Goran Visnjic, Maura Tierney and Mekhi Phifer, Nagra was the longest serving cast member and star of ER until the series concluded with season 15: episode 22 which was the two-hour series finale called "And in the End..." which aired on 2 April 2009. 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 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. Nagra was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctors of Letters by the University of Leicester on 11 July 2007. In 2008, Nagra was cast as Cassandra in the DC animated film Batman: Gotham Knight. In 2012, Nagra starred as Dr Lucy Banerjee in the cancelled J. J. Abrams television series Alcatraz. In 2013, Nagra starred as FBI agent Margot Malik in the NBC drama television series "The Blacklist".

Personal life

While on the set of the Fair Ladies at a Game of Poem Cards, she met Irish actor Kieran Creggan with whom she later moved into a flat in Kennington, South London. They dated for five years.

On 17 January 2009 Nagra married her boyfriend of seven years, photographer James Stenson. ER co-stars Scott Grimes and John Stamos performed at the ceremony, and former ER co-star and friend Maura Tierney officiated over the ceremony. Their son, Kai David Singh Stenson, was born on 19 May 2009. On 8 February 2012, it was reported that Nagra had filed for divorce.

Nagra had the honour of being a torch bearer as the Olympic torch passed through London on its way to the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens.

Filmography

Film

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1991	Dushmani Jattan Di
1998	King Girl	Ayshe	TV film
1999	Park Stories		Short film
1999	Donovan Quick	Radhika	TV film
2002	The Swap	Hotel Receptionist	TV film
2002	Bend It Like Beckham	Jesminder 'Jess' Bhamra
2003	Twelfth Night	Viola	TV film
2003	Second Generation	Heere/Sonali Sharma	TV film
2004	Ella Enchanted	Areida
2005	Maya the Indian Princess		Voice role
2008	In Your Dreams	Charlie
2008	Batman: Gotham Knight	Cassandra	Voice role
2008	Compulsion	Anjika Indrani	TV film
2011	Horrid Henry: The Movie	Miss Lovely
2012	Twenty8k	Deeva Jani

Television

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1996, 1998	Casualty	Ayisha / Asha Guptah	"Land of Hope" (season 10: episode 18) "Next of Kin" (season 13: episode 11)
1997	Turning World	Sabina	(season 1: episode 1) (season 1: episode 2) (season 1: episode 3)
2000	Goodness Gracious Me	Various	(season 3: episode 2) (season 3: episode 5)
2000	Holby City	Tina	"The Trouble with the Truth" (season 3: episode 7)
2001	Judge John Deed	Ishbel McDonald	"Exacting Justice (Pilot)"
2002	Always and Everyone	Sunita Verma	(season 4: episode 1)
2003"2009	ER	Dr. Neela Rasgotra	Series regular: 129 episodes
2010	The Whole Truth	Pilar Shirazee	"Liars" (season 1: episode 6)
2012	Alcatraz	Dr. Lucille "Lucy" Banerjee	Main role
2013	Psych	Rachael	Recurring role

Voice talent

• Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon (2011) as Ops

Awards

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