Indira Varma
Born: 27th September 1973 (as Indira Anne Varma)
Episodes Broadcast: 2006, 2024
Born in Bath, Somerset, Indira Varma was exposed to many types of
performance during her childhood, from the choreographed dancing of her
father's native India to the mime routines beloved of her parents,
neither of whom spoke English as a first language. As a teenager, she
acted with the Bath Youth Theatre and was an early member of the Musical
Youth Theatre Company. Although her father hoped that she would go into
medicine, Varma instead enrolled in the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art,
from which she graduated in 1995. The following year, her television
debut came in Crucial Tales, while director Mira Nair made her
the star of the film Kama Sutra: A Tale Of Love. More movies
followed, such as Jinnah with Christopher Lee, while Varma had
her first major television role in Psychos. The stage would also
feature prominently in her resume, including a 1997 run on
Othello at the National Theatre. It was during this production
that Varma began a relationship with her colleague, Colin Tierney; they
would marry and have a daughter, Evelyn.
After the turn of the century, Varma's movies included Bride &
Prejudice, in which the works of Jane Austen were reimagined to
feature a modern Indian family, and the Sharon Stone sequel Basic
Instinct 2. On television, she had a prominent role in Rome
and co-starred with the future Tenth Doctor, David Tennant, in a live
remake of The Quatermass Experiment. In 2006, it appeared that
Varma had been cast as one of the stars of the Doctor Who
spin-off Torchwood. In fact, this was a ruse to shock viewers:
her character, Suzie Costello, turned out to be a villain and was
killed in the series premiere, Everything Changes.
Nonetheless, Varma returned in the same season's They Keep Killing Suzie.
She joined the short-lived American medical drama 3 lbs shortly
thereafter, and could soon be seen in other Stateside programmes like
Law & Order: Criminal Intent and Bones.
During the 2010s, Varma divided her time between British and American
television, such as Luther, the comic book adaptation Human
Target, Game Of Thrones and This Way Up. On the silver
screen, her roles came in the likes of Anna, the Ridley Scott
epic Exodus: Gods And Kings, Una, and Official
Secrets starring the Eleventh Doctor, Matt Smith. Varma was also an
executive producer on both seasons of the historical drama Indian
Summers. In 2016, she began reprising Suzie Costello for the range
of Torchwood audio dramas from Big Finish Productions, starting
with Moving Target. Varma remained prolific during the Twenties
when For Life, The Capture, the Star Wars spin-off
Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Dune: The Sisterhood were amongst her
television credits. She could also be seen in the movie thriller
Crisis and the blockbuster sequel Mission: Impossible -- Dead
Reckoning Part One. In 2024, Varma appeared in Doctor Who
itself as the ill-fated Duchess of Pemberton in Rogue, an adventure opposite
Ncuti Gatwa's Fifteenth Doctor.
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