Nandana Sen is the international actor, writer, and child right activist, who is proper admixture of beauty with brains. She has earned for herself a place a zone which is integral to the Bollywood tinsel town.
Early Life of Nandana Sen
Sen was born in Kolkata, West Bengal to a Bengali Hindu family but she grew up in India, Europe and America. She is the daughter of Nobel Laureate and Bharat Ratna economist Amartya Sen and Padma Shri winner Nabanita Dev Sen, one of the highest-flying authors in the contemporary Bengali Literature.
She spent her growing years in various cities across Europe, India and America. She studied drama at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and studied literature at Harvard University. She was intensely influenced by U2, Satyajit Ray Nelson Mandela and comic books. She is the cultural repertoire of all the mixes.
Career of Nandana Sen
Sen experienced her first taste of cinema while still a student when director Goutam Ghose tapped her to play the lead in his dark and disturbing psychodrama The Doll as one of the targets of a middle-age man`s sexual obsession.
She debuted in Bollywood in the vehicle which was carted by Rani Mukherjee and Amitabh Bachchan starrer Sanjay Leela Bhansali`s Black in which she essayed the role of a 17-year-old sister of Rani. Her character was much-admired and highly praised by the viewers and the critics.
After teaming up on a succession of projects with Indian directors including Ram Gopal Varma and Nitin Manmohan, Sen signed in the raucous, terrorist-themed psychological drama The War Within (2005). In the process, she went on to make a name for herself cultivating a reputation for being drawn to offbeat, challenging, and demanding roles. Whether the award winning Rang Rasiya the films or the commercial ones, Nandana chooses to act stands out for their unusual and original content with space to act and show her confident on screen presence.
It was in the film "Tango Charlie" where she shared the screen space with the likes of Sanjay Dutt, Ajay Devgn and Bobby Deol. However she landed amidst pool of far fetched controversies due to her bold scenes where she had flaunted her back. The movie My Wife`s Murder offered her the opportunity to work with Anil Kapoor, Boman Irani and Suchitra Krishnamurthy. Both of these movies did well with the audiences as well as the critics. Later flicks, she did in Hindi were Strangers, Marigold, Rang Rasiya, The Forest and Prince. And it was in the midst that she dolled out for other projects in other languages.
It was the British television series Sharpe that conveniently added supplementary sparkles to vertical popularity graph. The episode `Sharpe`s Peril` featured her in the pivotal role. In 2007, Sen signed on to expose the role of a young rebellious woman fleeing from law authorities in director Shamim Sarif`s lesbian-themed period drama The World Unseen.
Contribution of Nandana Sen
Apart from being an actress who dares to bare it all and therefore be the symbolic totem of a bold femme fatale, her social work and her intellect has been a guiding light for Indian woman at large.
She has had worked with street kids in Kolkata when she had been a child herself at Harvard, and she started working with women and children had been the survivors of domestic abuse; and later in Bombay, she finally got actively involved with UNICEF`s adolescent empowerment programs. For years she has been working closely with RAHI (the first Indian organization to break the silence about Child Sexual Abuse) and the global cleft-care NGO Operation Smile. She is also involved with RENEW of Bhutan and with NCPCR (in the fight to stop Child Trafficking, and as Jury in Public Hearings about the RTE Act, etc.).
