Ayesha Dharker

Ayesha Dharker is a British actress born on 16 March 1978 in Mumbai, India. Her father, Anil Dharker, is a columnist and former editor of the Indian men's magazine Debonair, and her mother is Imtiaz Dharker, a poet, artist, and documentary filmmaker who was born in Lahore and raised in the United Kingdom. In May 2010, Dharker married Robert Taylor at St Giles Cripplegate in London.

Dharker made her screen debut in the 1989 François Villiers film Manika, une vie plus tard. Her early career included the Tamil film The Terrorist, in which she played Malli, a young woman manipulated into contemplating becoming a suicide bomber. The performance earned her a nomination for the National Film Award for Best Actress in India and the award for Best Artistic Contribution by an Actress at the Cairo International Film Festival. In 2002, she took on the role of Queen Jamillia, the Queen of Naboo, in Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones, and also appeared that year in Anita and Me. Subsequent film credits include The Mistress of Spices in 2005, Outsourced in 2006, in which she played Asha, and The Father in 2020, a production nominated for an Academy Award, in which she appeared as Dr. Sarai.

Dharker's television work spans multiple countries and genres. In the United Kingdom she appeared in the series Cutting It and Life Isn't All Ha Ha Hee Hee, the latter alongside Meera Syal. She played Solana Mercurio in the Doctor Who episode "Planet of the Ood" and took on the role of Tara Mandal in the ITV soap opera Coronation Street in 2008. In 2010 she appeared opposite Sanjeev Bhaskar in the BBC comedy-drama series The Indian Doctor, playing Kamini Sharma. Beginning in 2017, she joined the long-running BBC drama Holby City in the recurring role of Nina Karnik. In January 2022 she appeared in the Vera episode "As the Crow Flies" as Anika Naidu. She also narrated the audiobook edition of Monica Ali's novel Brick Lane in 2003.

On stage, Dharker appeared in the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Bombay Dreams, first in London's West End and subsequently on Broadway in 2004, marking her Broadway debut.