Sarita Catherine Louise Choudhury, known as Sarita Choudhury, is an English actress, best known for her roles in the Mira Nair-directed feature filmsMississippi Masala,. In the late 1990s, Choudhury added to her repertoire with supporting roles in the thriller A Perfect Murder, 3 A.M., and the John Cassavetes remake Gloria. In 2002, she starred in Just a Kiss. She played a lesbian virgin in Spike Lee's She Hate Me and acted as Anna Ran in Lady in the Water, a 2006 thriller by M. Night Shyamalan. She also played Egeria in and co-starred with Tom Hanks in the 2016 filmA Hologram for the King.
Choudhury starred opposite Denzel Washington in the 1990 filmMississippi Masala, for which she received her Screen Actors Guild card. She was still working as a waitress in Manhattan's East Village to make ends meet while the film was in theatres. After her debut film Mississippi Masala became an art house hit, Sarita Choudhury acted as a Pakistani country-western singer in Wild West, a Chilean maid who is raped in Bille August's adaptation of The House of the Spirits, and a lesbian mother in Fresh Kill. Choudhury appeared on ' for five episodes during the 1998–99 season as Dr. Kalyani, a medical examiner. Choudhury played the role of the King's mistress, Helen Pardis, in the NBC drama Kings. The series was based upon the Biblical story of King David but set in modern times. Her character's Biblical counterpart was Rizpah, a concubine of King Saul. She worked with independent film director Sona Jain in For Real. In an interview with The Statesman she said, "After Mississippi Masala and Kama Sutra I started getting offers in New York... doing theatres... I just went with the flow. One fine day, I thought that I haven't been back to India, haven't shot there and that's something I wanted to. There were Bollywood offers but it was not until Sona's script that made me look at India." The film had a commercial release in September 2010. She appears as character Saul Berenson's wife, Mira in the TV seriesHomeland. In 2011, she appeared in the joint British/French TV series Death in Paradise. Choudhury also had a brief cameo the 2013 comedy Admission. She appeared in the films ' and , as President Snow's assistant, Egeria. In 2015, she appears as the Deputy White House Political Director Sophia Varma in the American crime drama Blindspot.
