NEWS

Oration for Parminder Nagra by Professor Gordon Campbell

Parminder Nagra is known to the world at large as the star of Bend it like Beckham and as Neela in ER. Here in Leicester we think of her as one of us, one of whom we are immensely proud. Parminder was born in Belgrave, in the north of the city. Her family had emigrated here from India in the 1960s, and her parents both worked in factories in the city. The home language was Punjabi, which Parminder still speaks fluently. She attended Northfield House Primary School, and then moved on to Soar Valley College, where she played viola in the youth orchestra and began to act in theatrical productions. In 1991, at the age of 16, she secured a job as an usher at Leicester’s Haymarket Theatre, which enabled her to watch professional actors at work. Shortly after taking her A-levels she was invited by Jez Simons, her former drama teacher at Soar Valley, to join Hathi Productions, a Leicester-based British Asian theatre company of which he was artistic director. She said yes, and was soon rehearsing as a chorus member for a musical called Nimai, which was performed at the Leicester Haymarket. A week into rehearsals the leading actress dropped out, and Parminder was recruited to take her place.

Actors cannot make a living in Leicester, and soon Parminder made the inevitable move to London, where she lived modestly and took temporary jobs while auditioning. By the end of the year (1994) she had secured her first role, that of the Princess in Sleeping Beauty, a Christmas panto at the Theatre Royal in Stratford East. A series of radio, television and stage parts followed. Although she was primarily a stage actress in this period, her work included guest starring in Casualty and Holby City, which meant that she already had experience of medical drama when she moved to ER; at that stage she was playing patients, and hadn’t yet become a doctor.

In 2002 Parminder secured the part that was to transform her from a rising star on the London stage into an international celebrity: she was cast as Jess Bhamra in Bend it like Beckham. This was a low-budget film starring a 26-year-old actress who had never played football playing the part of a teenager who aspired to become a professional footballer. To play the part Parminder had to be able to kiss Jonathan Rhys Meyers, which no doubt required much practice. She also had to become a footballer, and so was inducted into the game by her coach Simon Clifford, who used the Brazilian technique of Futebol de Salão, in which the game is played on a small pitch with a small ball filled with foam. As the weeks went by, Clifford gradually taught Parminder to bend it like Beckham, and he then played the role of the coach himself in the film.

Actors with Parminder’s talent can play people very different from themselves, but sometimes there is a happy congruity between actor and character. As Parminder herself explained, ‘The character of Jess is very close to me. She is honest, steadfast and a little fighter on the pitch, much like me. She also follows her heart, which is something that I do too’. The film proved to be wildly successful, and when it was exported to the US it became the highest-grossing British comedy in US cinema history. Although Parminder had an established reputation in England, she was not then known in the US, and it is a tribute to her talent that she was able to triumph on such a scale. Nominations and awards began to pour in, including FIFA’s ‘International Football Personality of the Year’, which had never been awarded to a woman. Soon her portrait was hung in the National Portrait Gallery.

More film and television roles followed. She was a memorable Viola in a multicultural Twelfth Night, acted with Anne Hathaway in Ella Enchanted and played a sensual part in Second Generation, an Anglo-Indian film loosely based on King Lear; the final scenes were filmed in Kolkata, which gave Parminder her first opportunity to visit her ancestral homeland.

In 2003 Parminder was invited to join the cast of ER, where she plays Neela Rasgotra. She soon became, as Noah Wyle announced, the future of ER. She has to date acted in more than 90 episodes, and has become a central character in the series. Minor characters in drama remain reassuringly static, but major characters must develop, and so Parminder has developed Neela. As she has progressed from medical student in 2003 to intern in 2004, resident in 2005 and surgical intern in 2006, so the plot of her complicated love life and the experience of bereavement has matured her emotionally. Parminder has had to manage this character development under the gaze of millions of viewers, and she has done so triumphantly.

What lies ahead? Next month she will be returning to ER for another year –22 episodes in 9 months-- and she is also considering various film roles and working on projects of her own devising. We shall cheer her on, and today’s ceremony will also allow us to assist her in one important respect. In American universities the first degree in medicine is that of Doctor of Medicine, and Parminder has risked being struck off the medical register for not having a doctorate. A remedy is now at hand. Mr Chancellor, on the authority of the Senate and of the Council, I present to you Parminder Kaur Nagra, that you may confer upon her the degree of Doctor of Letters.