I like to cook Indian food when I can. I find the process of creating a home-cooked meal to be unwinding.

I love roles where I have to transform myself.

There is a big misconception about arranged marriage. Yes, it can mean that you meet someone and then have to marry them, but this was my mother saying, 'I'm going to introduce you to so-and-so - If you don't like them, fair enough.

Since I was a baby my goal was to be on TV because film was just impossible - you never got any Asian women in Western cinema. I grew up wanting to be in 'East-Enders' because film wasn't even a dream. The community were very much like, 'How can you want to act? It's such a low-class profession.

The generation that migrated to the West in the 1970s or 1960s has now lived more in the West than India, and India has changed so much. My parents fall into that category.

I have always let the lack of Indian actors in the industry drive me, not hold me back. I remember an agent in L.A. telling me a few years ago that an Indian actor wouldn't ever make it in Hollywood, but my ethnicity has helped me.

I feel like I have one foot in New York, one foot in London and one foot in India. But it's important to me to invest time with family.