We bring you some talented actors who despite their foreign descent have been successful in making a mark in Bollywood.
Bollywood is a great leveller and a melting pot of many cultures and even nationalities. Together they all blend the best of art and artists to treat the audience with the finest cinema. Apart from mainly Indian actors working in the industry, there are some immensely talented people from faraway lands who have embraced India, made it their home and successfully contributed to the Indian film industry. Many of them have been here since generations, while others have landed on the Indian soil some years ago only to be a forever part of the film industry.
Here are some actors of foreign descent in Bollywood who not only have made a successful mark in movies but are also very popular with the audience.
Tom Alter: Frankly speaking, it is somehow a disgrace to call him a foreigner as he was the third generation of American missionaries who had settled in India back in 1916. The quintessential ‘Gora Saheb’ of Indian films was a white man only from the looks, and this worked in his favour as he was the first choice for the role of a foreigner in many movies. An FTII graduate, Alter was a seasoned theatre artist with his own Theatre Company and an authority of Urdu poetry. He passed away in 2016.
Helen: It might come as a surprise to many, but Helen has a mixed parentage of Anglo Indian father and Burmese mother. She was one of the first cabaret dancers of Indian cinema who went on to become a dancing legend in her own right. She ruled the ‘item-song’ genre for more than thirty years.
Kalki Koechlin: The actor is known for being unconventional in her choice of movies and has a non-conformist body of work. Born to hippie parents who settled in Puducherry, Kalki has been raised a desi and is fluent in Hindi, French, English and Tamil.
Nargis Fakhri: Better known as Heer from her super hit movie Rockstar to her fans, the beautiful actor of half Czech and half Pakistani descent. Born and brought up in New York, she debuted in Bollywood from Rockstar and went on to do many more films after that.
Katrina Kaif: The A-list star from the Indian film industry is a British by birth. She was born to a British mother and Kashmiri father in England, came to Mumbai as a model in early 2000s and never looked back. Her real name is Katrina Turquotte. The comely actor works very hard on her Hindi, and her efforts have borne results in the form of many super hits movies.
