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The Arts

South Asian actors make their presence felt

Sonia Chopra

Slowly but gradually, South Asian actors are becoming a powerful presence. They show up everywhere, in plays, television sitcoms and movies, sharing the limelight with Hollywood stars, getting good reviews and making a name for themselves.

To reflect the '90s class of immigrants, who are suave, cosmopolitan and educated doctors, engineers and computer specialists, actors too have moved up a couple of notches.

It looks like the days of the quick scenes of taxi-drivers and street vendors with their exaggerated gestures and accents are out. A big factor is the drive and ambition of the new breed of actors who are pushing their marketability.

Ajay Mehta is an international actor, who has been acting all his life, in one form or another. He says he was "born with the greasepaint on" and promises "to die entertaining".

"It's in my blood. My entire family performed in plays together for fun," said Mehta, who has pursued his acting across the globe from New Delhi to Hong Kong before settling down in Manhattan, New York.

Recently, Mehta was in the season finale of a popular television serial Sopranos, playing a wealthy CEO -- an episode that was watched by nine million viewers.

He said his "travels" had added to his acting persona and gave him a "cosmopolitan" accent, which has been a "tremendous asset". He also does voice-overs for television and radio.

"The 'accent' or lack of it has never been an issue... because I have an ear for accents; I grew up imitating my teachers and everyone around me. I can talk like anyone," says Mehta, who displayed his chameleon-like ability by imitating half-a-dozen accents in a few minutes.

Mehta says he often goes to auditions and gets the role "because I have a sense about how they want me to perform". It is a formula that has got him guest roles in ABC's Soul Man and CBS's The Nanny and a part in the play, East is East.

"He's extraordinarily talented. He has poise and he added dignity and elegance to his role. He has a very bright future and I know he is going to go places," said John Coles, who directed HBO's Sex and the City, and hired Mehta for the job. "We originally had a small role for him. But when he came in and read, we created this role for him."

Coles has won the International Critics Award, among others, and worked with actors like Kathleen Turner, Kevin Spacey and Brian Dennehy.

"It happens to me all the time," says Mehta modestly, referring to roles being created for him. He too plays the role handed to him "with gusto".

He believes an actor must prove himself in different genres with the stage being the most demanding. "The stage is the ultimate test of an actor. There are no retakes, no second chances."

His forte, critics say, is comedy. "Whatever I do, I do because I love it... for the passion, for the art, the fame, the glory and the applause. And in that Indian actors here are no different from the others -- we all want the same things," says Mehta.

Other Indian actors concur and add that it's a brave new world in casting now. "It's quite an exciting time to be an ethnic actor. I think the casting boundaries are fading and film-makers are starting to be more adventurous and open to new ideas," says Rahul Khanna, who consistently attracts media attention.

For the son of matinee idol-turned-politician Vinod Khanna and ex-model Gitanjali Taleyarkhan, Khanna would have had it easy in Bollywood. But he wants to make it in the US. Critics say he has a good chance.

"Rahul is already a star. He has the movie-starish quality, the film-star persona and the looks. He's got what it takes," says Scott Elliott, who directed him and five other Indian actors in East is East, an off-Broadway production.

"For someone who has acted for the first time on stage, he has really evolved as an artiste and delivered big time," says Elliott, who has won several awards for his work. Among his credits are Goose-Pimples (three Drama Desk nominations), Ecstasy (two OBIE Awards, the Calloway Award) and Curtains (two OBIE Awards).

Khanna decided at 17 that he wanted "to take a different route" even though he "has great respect and awe for actors" back home. He started out with acting classes at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute, New York, and became a VJ at MTV, based in Singapore, but broadcast live all over Asia.

Film folk say "he is a natural in front of the camera" and "blessed with the famous Khanna genes", and the media has detailed his style of clothing and fan following -- noting that "girls would line up outside the studio from 7am to catch a glimpse of the star".

Khanna made his stage debut in East is East, where he spent "hours and hours perfecting and working on the Manchester accent", says Stephen Gabis, dialect coach for the play. He made his film debut with Deepa Mehta's Earth. Mehta has called him "a fine actor".

Khanna admits that name recognition can be an asset, "but it only gets you in the door. Once inside, if you don't have the talent, it doesn't keep you in the door."

"I am very lucky I have had two wonderful projects that actors sometimes wait years to get," he says.

While these actors are fitting into any roles, there are others who explore the feelings of South Asian immigrants. Aasif Mandvi is perhaps the first to do that with his Sakina's Restaurant. He wrote, produced and acted out five roles in the play which was scheduled to run for a month, but ran six months off-Broadway.

"I have played my share of cab-driver roles," says Mandvi. "I'm not going to be playing any more... unless they pay me an obnoxious amount of money."

Mandvi, who paved his own passage to stardom, wrote his play as part of a standup comedy act. A year later, when he was accepted into Wynn Handman's theatrical class at The American Place Theatre in New York, it began to take the form of a play.

Handman, a legend in acting circles, has been teaching stars such as Michael Douglas, Richard Gere, Alec Baldwin and Denzel Washington since the 1960s.

"Aasif is highly intelligent and very original. He's gifted and talented enough to use that gift to portray his observations," says Handman, who called Mandvi's play a milestone. "To draw on his immigrant experience... to write about it, to explore it, it's the logical thing to do."

But Mandvi says immigrant actors still have a long way to go before Hollywood comes calling.

"There are no South Asian actors in Hollywood because there are no South Asian writers in Hollywood. We need more writers to write multi-dimensional roles. A guy from Connecticut who goes to Hollywood to be a scriptwriter cannot possibly write interesting roles for ethnic actors," says Mandvi, who is currently writing a screenplay that draws its inspiration from the characters in his play.

Nisha Ganatra, an independent film-maker whose first feature film, Chutney Popcorn, has received three awards already, agrees with Mandvi and challenges the audience to react to the films, to get a change.

"Audiences hold a tremendous amount of power. The opening weekend at movies can help determine whether Hollywood will make more of a given type of movie. Send a message, go to the opening weekend and you will see more of those kind of movies," says Ganatra.

Ganatra tried to get roles as an actress in Hollywood at 17, but succeeded only in getting tiny ones and some television pilots. She moved to New York, got a degree in film-making, and decided she liked being behind the camera better.

"The only way we [South Asian actors] can get good roles is for us to generate more awareness of our culture and we have to do this by writing out, speaking publicly and being visible," she says.

Some say that may take a while. "Let's get one thing straight -- we are not part of the mainstream and we will never be. It will be another couple of generations before we actually, truly make it," says Atiqa Odho, a well-known Pakistani actress, who has been acting for a decade and has movie, theatre, television, modelling and radio work to her credit.

But Odho's impressive resume has got her very "few meaty roles" in the US. "I get tired of people in auditions telling me that I 'don't sound American enough'. My retort to that is 'I don't look American either'," says Odho.

She has brown hair and green eyes and has played roles as Middle Eastern, French and Italian women and has an accent that is part British and part upper-class Pakistani.

Then there are other South Asian actors who spend their lives training themselves to sound and be American. "That's our job. As actors, we should be able to put on a drop-dead, kick-ass accent in a second," says Shaheen Vaaz, 27, who studied theatre at Columbia University.

Vaaz, who played the lead in Romeo and Juliet for the National Shakespeare Company last year and had a "memorable role" in East is East, says she always stalks with an American accent because she "got tired of the many comments" of her "not sounding American".

Experts say accents don't have to stand in the way of good acting. "The aim is to speak clearly and be understood. All actors put on accents temporarily. An actor's real accent shouldn't inhibit them," says Daniel Stern, PhD, who spent 12 years in Hollywood coaching actors like Forrest Whitaker, Julia Roberts, Sally Fields and Liam Neeson to put on accents for the movies.

Today, he teaches drama at the University of Connecticut. But he does acknowledge that some actors can't play "all-American roles" and he gave an example of Neeson who never plays an American because of his thick accent.

Sakina Jaffrey, 31, agrees. The daughter of two very famous actors, Saeed and Madhur Jaffrey, she played "many, many stereotypes" in the beginning. "It's hard for film-makers to sometimes see us in lead roles, but talent will always shine through and Hollywood will come calling. It's only a matter of time." Her credits include roles in Daylight, Indian in the Cupboard and Masala.

Next: Nina Tangri takes up the challenge

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