Word: das
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...NANDITA DAS...
Dreamy young movie stars usually don't worry about much--other than perhaps how to conceal their age. But Nandita Das doesn't like life to be quite so ordinary. Cross-legged and barefoot in her modest New Delhi apartment, she's steaming about the opposition of Hindu fanatics to a movie she's set to appear in, fretting about the state of artistic freedom in India and getting set to join relief efforts for victims of last October's deadly cyclone. She's also in mid-production on three movies. "I don't think I want to do acting...
...hair cropped for a current role, the petite, doe-eyed Das could pass for a teenager. It is easy to forget she's a bona fide, head-turning celebrity, in part because there aren't too many actresses like her in Hollywood, or even in its Bombay counterpart, Bollywood. She has a master's degree in social work, for one thing, and she regularly takes on politically charged pictures like her latest, Water, which is about the lives of widows in pre-independence India...
...film has placed Das amid a national tempest. In late January, one day before shooting was to begin in the holy city of Varanasi, a group of Hindus stormed the set and burned part of it down. City officials ordered a production halt. Shooting won't resume until fall. Frustrated by the disruption to her work, Das is even more worried about how the uproar has distorted the image of her country. "What is interesting and fascinating about this country is that everything coexists," she says. "You have the extreme fanatics, but there are also very progressive and very open...
...Das hopes the controversy will spur a broader debate about intolerance in Indian democracy. "India is going through a very strange phase," she says. Das is cautiously enthusiastic that the growing influence of Western culture will loosen things, but she also says, "If I ever had to live anywhere, in spite of everything, I would live here." And she volunteers that "I'm not all for privatization. We set up a mixed economy in the constitution, and I'm sure a lot of thought went into that." It is the first time in a while that any movie star...