Sarita Choudhury

A few years ago, I got cast as a white boy in an off-Broadway play. So not only was it colour-blind, it was gender-blind as well. That would never happen in film.

I loved my role in 'Learning to Drive.' It was so different.

People have this impression that once you move to America, that becomes your interest. But I never moved to Los Angeles; I stayed in New York because I do theatre, so my aim is not just Hollywood.

If you ever watch me at theatre rehearsals, you will know what a bad actress I am. I am bad... bad... bad... and then, by opening night, it all just falls into place.

When you do TV, people will say to you right on the street how they're feeling, with no reservations.

To do a movie with someone like Tom Hanks that when you tell your dad, your dad knows who Tom Hanks is - it feels like you're finally giving back to your parents. It's like you've actually done something that they can recognize, and there's something in me that makes them super proud.

I don't think of the characters as nationalities. I do not live in India. Playing people from different backgrounds, including Indians, comes easily to me.

Having grown up in different countries - Jamaica, Italy, U.K. - I catch the accents quite easily. In the U.S., they don't know where I am from!

I was very shy about acting. I thought you had to be confident. I was confident with my friends, but I would never think of acting in front of anyone else.

My parents are really open-minded, but with their own daughter, it's not the same thing.

Playing Frida was hard and wonderful. I found such a force in her, bigger than me. I tried to make it just a woman who had to do what she did. A woman who lived, ate, and laughed. I tried to avoid the 'icon' of Frida Khalo.

Anything, really - I'm as comfortable playing an Indian as playing a black woman or a South American.