‘Lucky to have never faced racial bias in US’

NIMRAT KAUR,

There’s much talk about how Bollywood actors are now going to the West. But for Nimrat Kaur (left), who shot to fame in India with Lunchbox (starring Irrfan Khan), this isn’t new. She herself became an overnight sensation with a breakthrough role in season four of the hit American TV show, Homeland. This was followed by her work in another American series, Wayward Pines.

She’s yet to sign a feature film in Hollywood, but not because there aren’t any offers. “There are things on the table; all I need to do is pick my roles,” she says.

Nimrat points out that over the years, “we’ve had actors like Om Puri, Saeed Jaffrey who worked in the West in the early ’90s. We’re only carrying on a legacy.”

As for racial bias, Nimrat says, “I’ve been extremely lucky to have never faced racial discrimination in the West. I know it does exist, but I haven’t faced [it] on the basis of ethnicity or colour,” says the actor, whose second big Bollywood film was last year’s release Airlift.

Though films will be her mainstay, Nimrat has just finished her next project, a web series on the first woman to be trained for a combat role in the armed forces. While growing up, joining the Indian Army was her dream, since her father was an Army officer. “Working on the [web] show,” she says, “has been a most physically taxing, yet highly rewarding, process.” ■ sneha.mahadevan@hindustantimes.com

ACTOR I was enamoured of the Army life. When I grew up, I realised that behind that uniform and fancy life, there was a lot of hard work