PANJABI BY THE NUMBERS
4 Acting awards she has
won
5’3” Her height
14 Movies she has appeared in.
27 Age when she
made her film debut.
38 Her current age (She was born May 31, 1972.)
41
Episodes of The Good Wife she has appeared in.
PANJABI QUOTES
“It was a complete shock (winning an Emmy). I was up against five very
talented and established actresses … but it was a well-received shock. The
best way to describe it is to compare it to a child’s first trip to Disneyland.”
(The Guardian)
“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.” (London
Daily Mail)
“I’d love to do a romantic comedy. And perhaps, if the
character was right and I had a good gut instinct, a Bollywood movie.” (The
Guardian)
PANJABI FACTS
Archana “Archie” Panjabi was born in
London to immigrants from India. Her father, Govind, operated a restaurant,
while her mother, Padma, was a special-needs teacher.
Following high
school, she earned a bachelor’s degree in management studies from Brunel
University in West London (thus satisfying her parents), then set her sights on
acting. She had dreamed of acting in the British soap EastEnders, but her
audition for a role was unsuccessful. Not long afterwards, however, she landed
her first major role — in the 1999 movie East is East.
Her other film
roles include Bend It Like Beckham (2002), The Constant Gardener (2005) and A
Mighty Heart (2007), for which she won The Chopard Trophy at the Cannes Film
Festival.
Last year, she joined the cast of the CBC series The Good
Wife, playing the role of Kalinda Sharma, and recently won a Primetime Emmy
Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series.
PANJABI ON
ARRANGED MARRIAGE
At the age of 26, Panjabi agreed to an arranged
marriage, tying the knot with tailor Rajesh Nihalani. She hasn’t regretted it.
“There is a big misconception about arranged marriage,” she has said.
“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.’ At the time it brought out my rebellious streak because
I thought her taste in men was not going to be like mine. But at the end of the
day, she knows me better than anybody.”