Swing out Sista

Her people said we would meet at the Dorchester, Hilton or Ritz. I would have settled for a trailer van, while she put on her make-up. In the end it came to a hastily arranged one to one in my living room. The time was past midnight, I had to get up for work the next morning.

The phone rang at the other end, "Hello, this is Parminder" At last, two months, letters, phone calls, exchanging numbers and emails of agents, publicists, American receptionists; I had finally got through to my interviewee. I met and discussed football with my idol at 17, and that seemed like a walk across the park, it was his only interview that year!! So much for the girl next door, she's moved to another continent across the pond.

To tell you the truth Parminder is charming, articulate and extremely funny and this is on a long distance phone call in the middle of the night. You can see how she has got from her auntie,s textile business, based in a shed, to mixing it big with the Hollywood 'A' list. "I believe you've been waiting to see me for a while." An actor's sense of under statement never seizes to amaze. But believe it or not Parminder has had no formal training in her chosen profession. In fact her big break came in a small time pantomime in South London in the mid-nineties.

As my first major subject for Asian Image I know alarmingly too much about Parminder Kaur Nagra. Born in Leicester in 1975 to parents who came across from Punjab, India in the sixties, this Midlands Punjaban has not lost her roots one little bit. "I think it's the Punjabi in me. Punjabis are naturally passionate, we,re a lot like the Italians and Greeks. I've had to calm down a great deal in Los Angeles, but when my friends come over I really let my hair down and the Punjabi goes into overflow." "My mother tongue is Punjabi and it is a little off-putting when your interviewee starts answering you back in fluent Punjabi like a feisty cousin. It,s not a reaction that I,m going to encourage in future meetings."

Los Angeles, where Parminder is now based, really is a million miles away from her early days as a fledgling actress where in between stints on Holby City, Casualty, Judge John Deed and others Parminder took several temp jobs to pay for all those essential bills in the capital.

"I'd never really wanted to become an actress "I just sort of fell into this profession. I was supposed to go onto university when the lead of a musical, that was due to be staged by my old drama teacher, dropped out and I was drafted in. You could say that I haven't looked back since."

She went on to play Sleeping Beauty in Stratford East, and accomplished a few more theatre roles in the next year. "As most actors will tell you the theatre really does prepare you for film and television. The interaction between the cast and audience was a real buzz. And despite it being lonely and hard going I never really thought about packing it in."

One of the real plus points about Parminder is that she hasn,t type cast herself for specific Asian roles. There is real talk at the moment about the rise of the British Asian pop scene, and that transcends in the success of the influence of Bollywood into popular culture.

"I'm not a big fan of the Bollywood movies, especially the latest films. I've probably seen most of the classics with my parents when I was growing up. But I've never really thought I've got to get to Bollywood at all. I wasn't that sad little teenage girl miming Mohammed Rafi songs in the garden, and thinking about dancing across the fields of the park with my loved with the music playing in the background.

"Some of the roles I have taken on are British Asian, even though I don,t really know what that stands for in the film world. It helped my profile that directors were looking for Asian faces in the late 90s to fill the equality voids in dramas. There seems to be more Asian actors in the soaps these days, but I,m not sure that these Asians are a true reflection of the Asians that you and I know of, or are they?"

The only mistake Parminder made throughout our interview was to ask me a question, I only managed to curtail my answer to her rhetorical question when I looked at my watch and reminded myself that I was paying for the long distance phone call. Charming though she may be, but Parminder knew I was at an Asian at heart.

"I think the term Asian covers so many people anyway." Parminder continued, "When you come over to the States you just realise that you can't use words like Asian and Indian anymore - you've got to be more specific. I just say Leicester, UK."

One of Leicester's finest imports, much prettier than Gary Lineker, Parminder is Britain's Premier Asian born actress. Not saying much. And not that 'Asian' word again, protests the girl from the East Midlands, "If I got a pound, or a dollar, for every Asian word in interviews that I have done I could probably buy Leicester City and come home." What about home, did she miss it? "I've been away from home for over a decade now, and although I do miss my parents and the extended Punjabi clam, but life is quite short and this is a huge, huge opportunity for me, and it,s not exactly the right time to become home sick?

We're about half way through the interview and there has been no mention of that pre-madonna, over-rated, Anna Kournikova of football who is somehow the captain of the national football team.

"You must hate Manchester United then!" For the record I don't really care that she has met him briefly twice. Once at the premiere when Parminder sat in front of the golden couple. On the other occasion, when he was "immensely, charming at an official function in London.

And I am flabbergasted when Parminder chooses to mention him as a 'huge icon and role model'. What I am interested in though is how she got her opportunity to star in the Bend It Like Bekham film.

The director (Gorinder Chadha) had sounded me out about the project about a year before the film had got its backing. It was just the sort out of thing that I could get my teeth into, but at the time I thought it might be a 'made for television' special."

"Even though she (Chadha) had been pressing me to play the lead role she made me complete the auditions in full so I wasn,t absolutely certain that I would get the nod." And how about the football moves. Sporting films, with the exception of Raging Bull, rarely transfer well into the fictional film genre but Bend It really works, and much of the success goes to Parminder and Keira Knightley for their work.

"We spent about eight weeks training each day for about three-four hours per day. We also had a 90 minute session of aerobics each day. We were also given videos of football training and actual matches. So it was very intense and very demanding. Before this I hadn't even seen a ball kicked in action."

If you haven't had the chance to watch Bend It you may be pleasantly surprised. You could argue that it sides on the conventional Asian stereotypes at times, but with a fantastic soundtrack the movie really works. "Well thanks very much for your endorsement, and there are hundreds of thousands who would agree with you. But seriously it was a great project to work on, and at the time of working on the film and the post production I really didn't think it would become the success it did," admits Parminder.

The added, and most welcome, bonus to the success was the reaction that Bend It received in the U.S. "It was the major reason I got the part in ER. The producers and directors had been looking at an Indian character for a number of years and apparently, I'm not sure how much of this was true, when they saw me in Bend It (you know who) one the directors pinpointed me as a future cast member."

Thus far into the interview the pace has been sedate, almost jovial. It was time to see how friendly this interviewee really was. So did Parminder feel that if she was white then she would have been offered numerous Hollywood roles, I mean she was the lead role in Bend It. If someone told me four years ago that I would be appearing in one of the most watched television dramas in the world and had also appeared in one of the largest grossing British movies of the decade - I would have bit their hand off."

Keira Knightley, co-actor to Parminder's Jess in Bend It is now regularly appearing on the Hollywood Premier red carpets while Parminder's contract with ER is due for renewal at the end of this series. "Keira has done really well, and not for one moment am I jealous of her success.

Actors and actresses realise the amount of work we put in for the roles and Keira fully deserves her position as one the leading British players in the Hollywood movie scene." I have my own opinions about the inequality, and I'm sure that both Parminder and the readers of this piece can work it out for themselves.

There are some fringe benefits to being an actress and one of those is meeting all those co-stars. And Parminder is one the few Asian actresses to have shared a screen kiss, or two or three and more.

There was Martin Shaw (in Judge John Deed), Jonathan Rhys Meyers (Bend It), Danny Dyer and Christopher Simpson (Second Generation). No wonder she doesn't want to do Bollywood. "Hey, have you seen those movies these days?" A clearly embarrassed Parminder argues. "I thought you didn't watch Bollywood?" "The cable operators often show clips from Zee TV, and believe me these Bollywood movies have become quite a bit risqu." Back to your kisses Parminder, is that all in a days work? I though this was a family newspaper, read by good wholesome Asian families in the North West who wouldn't appreciate this line of questioning.

To tell you the truth on one of those occasions I became so engrossed in the moment that I forgot my lines! This hadn't been an interview it was a cosy chat on the sofa. Was this something to do with my canny interview techniques that I had garnered through speaking to the top personalities in the North West and beyond.

Not in the slightest. Parminder is the most easy going, feet-on-the-ground, naturally lively person who happens to be a major acting talent in the world. So an invitation to continue the interview in London, sometime in 2005, was a small endorsement on my part. But at 2.30am, I had got what I wanted out of Parminder Nagra. She was well worth waiting for.

Interview by Zaffer M Khan