1. Parminder Kaur Nagra was born on 5 October 1975 and is an English actress.
36 Facts About Parminder Nagra
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Parminder Nagra is known for portraying Jess Bhamra in the film Bend It Like Beckham and Dr Neela Rasgotra in the NBC medical drama ER.
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Parminder Kaur Nagra was born on 5 October 1975 in Leicester, Leicestershire, to Sukha and Nashuter Nagra, who emigrated from India in the 1960s.
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Parminder Nagra's parents separated when she was a young child, and her mother remarried and she was raised in this family.
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Parminder Nagra accepted and was cast as a chorus member in the 1994 musical Nimai, presented at the Haymarket Theatre in Leicester.
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Parminder Nagra left Leicester for London and decided not to go to university.
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Parminder Nagra appeared in "The 6th Wonder of the World: The Kali Tutti Story", in 1994.
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In 1996, Parminder Nagra took a small part in Chikamatsu Monzaemon's Fair Ladies at a Game of Poem Cards that was performed at Cottesloe, Royal National Theatre.
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In 1997, Parminder Nagra appeared in the three-part drama Turning World alongside Roshan Seth.
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Parminder Nagra co-starred in radio plays including, among others, plays by Tanika Gupta.
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In 1998, Parminder Nagra co-starred in the radio play Dancing Girls of Lahore which was co-written by her future Bend It Like Beckham co-star Shaheen Khan.
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In 2001, Parminder Nagra voiced a Muslim girl in the docu-drama Arena: The Veil about women who choose to wear the Muslim head scarf.
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In 1997, not long after Fair Ladies at a Game of Poem Cards, Parminder Nagra was cast in Oh Sweet Sita, an adaptation of Indian mythology about Rama and his wife Sita, in the title role of Sita.
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Parminder Nagra played the lead role in Gurinder Chadha's 2002 comedy-drama Bend It Like Beckham, which became her breakthrough film, alongside Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Anupam Kher, Archie Panjabi, Shaheen Khan, and Keira Knightley, for whom this film became a career breakthrough.
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Parminder Nagra played Jesminder "Jess" Bhamra, a teenage Sikh football player who idolises football superstar David Beckham and defies her traditional parents to pursue her dreams of playing football.
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Parminder Nagra agreed to audition and eventually accepted the role.
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Parminder Nagra learned to "bend" or curve the ball in flight, as she did in a scene in the film.
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Parminder Nagra was nominated, and won, several awards, including the FIFA Presidential Award, making her the first woman to have done so.
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Not long after filming ended on Bend It Like Beckham, Parminder Nagra co-starred in the fantasy romantic comedy Ella Enchanted alongside Anne Hathaway where she played Areida, the best friend of Hathaway's's title character.
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Parminder Nagra's visit to Calcutta to film the final scenes set there was Nagra's first visit to India.
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Not long after the meeting, Parminder Nagra signed a one-year contract that included an option for three additional years.
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Parminder Nagra appeared in twenty-one of the season's twenty-two episodes, including the twelfth episode titled "NICU" and the seventeenth episode titled "The Student", episodes in which her character played a central role.
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When Parminder Nagra finished filming the eleventh season of ER in 2005, she returned to her native Leicester to star in Love in Little India directed by Amit Gupta.
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Parminder Nagra was nominated in 2006 for an Asian Excellence Award, in the category of Outstanding Female Television Performance, for her work in ER, and won the award the following year.
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In 2008, Parminder Nagra voiced Cassandra in the DC animated film Batman: Gotham Knight.
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Parminder Nagra played Miss Lovely in the children's film Horrid Henry: The Movie.
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Parminder Nagra then starred as Dr Lucy Banerjee in the Fox science fiction drama series Alcatraz which ran for one season from 16 January to 26 March 2012.
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Parminder Nagra starred as CIA agent Meera Malik in the first season of the NBC crime drama series The Blacklist from 2013 to 2014.
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In 2016, Parminder Nagra joined the second season of British arctic psychological thriller Fortitude.
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In 2018, Parminder Nagra joined the second season of the Netflix web television series 13 Reasons Why as Priya Singh, the new counsellor of Liberty High.
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Parminder Nagra starred as the titular character of the ITV series DI Ray.
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In 1996, while on the set of the play Fair Ladies at a Game of Poem Cards, Parminder Nagra met Irish actor Kieran Creggan, with whom she later moved into a flat in Kennington, South London.
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On 17 January 2009, after a seven-year relationship, Parminder Nagra married photographer James Stenson.
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Parminder Nagra was one of the bearers of the Olympic torch as it passed through London on its way to the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece.
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Parminder Nagra was awarded the honorary degree of doctors of letters by the University of Leicester on 11 July 2007.
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Parminder Nagra has been nominated for or won a number of awards for her acting work, including:.