Starting this September, Boman Irani, Tabu, Anupam Kher, and Urmila Matondkar will teach at the first Bollywood acting school in Britain. The school will be based in the Ealing Institute of Media in the west London borough of Ealing. It will train British and British Asian students for careers in India's mammoth entertainment industry.
The School is a partnership between the Indian acting academy Actor Prepares, Heathrow City Partnership (HCP) and the EHWLC, the Ealing Hammersmith & West London College. Actor Prepares is a teaching academy founded in 2005 in Mumbai by Kher -- best known in the UK for his role in Bend It Like Beckham -- who will be the key person driving the school here. About 60 students will be admitted in the first year and will pay roughly $12,000 each for a three-month course.
This acting school is the outcome of increasing linkages in recent years between Indian films and Britain in terms of story themes, actors, locales and post-production activities. Several Indian films are shot in Britain every day while regional agencies offer incentives for Indian film producers to shoot and carry out post-production work in their regions.
Kishore Lulla, chairman of Eros International, said that a British Bollywood acting school was overdue. "There will be huge demand among young South Asians and plenty of parts available to them playing South Asians who live abroad," he said. "Five or ten years ago their parents would have disapproved because they wanted their children to be doctors or engineers but now they are more relaxed about letting them act." "Bollywood actors are making more money than those professions and the industry is more transparent and less disreputable than it was," he said.
