Archie Panjabi

Archana "Archie" Panjabi (born 31 May 1972) is an English actress, best known for her role as Kalinda Sharma on The Good Wife. Her portrayal has earned her a Primetime Emmy Award in 2010 and an NAACP Image Award in 2012, as well as two further Emmy nominations, one Golden Globe nomination, and three Screen Actors Guild Award nominations shared with the cast. Her other notable roles include Yasmin Husseini in Yasmin (2005), Pinky Bhamra in Bend It Like Beckham (2002) and Asra Nomani in A Mighty Heart (2007). Early life Panjabi was born in London, to Govind and Padma Punjabi, both Sindhi Hindu immigrants from India. She graduated from Brunel University with a degree in management studies in 1996. She is also classically trained in ballet. Career Panjabi has appeared in both film and television, from early appearances in the 1999 comedy film East is East to the BBC television series Life on Mars. Her first Hollywood role, as a British diplomat, was in the Oscar winning The Constant Gardener, released in 2005. One of her highest profile film roles was in the 2002 comedy release Bend It Like Beckham. In 2007, Panjabi appeared with Angelina Jolie in the movie adaptation of A Mighty Heart, a book by Mariane Pearl, wife of the journalist Daniel Pearl, playing the role of former Wall Street Journal reporter Asra Nomani. Panjabi has also provided the voices for several characters in the British children's television animation Postman Pat. Panjabi lent her voice to the video game Dead Space: Extraction. Panjabi appeared on the BBC Four World Cinema Award show in February 2008, arguing the merits of five international hits such as The Lives of Others and Pan's Labyrinth with Jonathan Ross and Christopher Eccleston. In 2009 she portrayed an MI5 agent in the French movie Espion(s), and in the same year she joined the cast of the new CBS television series The Good Wife as Kalinda Sharma. In 2010, she played Saamiya Nasir in the British comedy The Infidel. On 28 May 2012, she was cast as Paula Reed Smith, a pathologist, in BBC Two drama series The Fall.