Spotlight On: Archie Panjabi

An actress you are seeing more and more of and who you may not be able to easily place, Archie Panjabi is racing up the star-o-meter with her electrifying performance on the hit CBS series The Good Wife. An English actress, who started her career on a little known film Bideshi, Archie has been busily working for the past decade in a variety of English film and television roles. Her big break came from the comedy film East is East, in which she played a teenager obsessed with soccer.

Archie Panjabi stars opposite Julianna Margulies in The Good Wife / CBS

This was ironic, as she was then cast in the romantic comedy Bend It Like Beckham, where she played the marriage-obsessed sister of a girl obsessed with soccer. However, it was Archie’s scene-stealing performance as Pinky Bharma, sister of Parminder Nagra’s character that many remember. As Pinky, Archie was delightfully vivacious and tenacious in her desire to marry for love. Then, while Parminder Nagra went onto to join ER, Kiera Knightley joined Pirates of the Caribbean, and Jonathan Rhys Meyers went on to helm The Tudors, Archie continued her celluloid journey by criss-crossing between film and television roles, landing in the series Grease Monkeys playing Rita Dhillon, and then moving onto the critically acclaimed films Yasmin, The Constant Gardner (starring Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz), A Good Year (starring Russell Crowe), A Mighty Heart (starring Angelina Jolie and Dan Futterman), and Traitor (starring Don Cheadle and Guy Pearce). She also made appearances on the hit British series Life on Mars and Personal Affairs.

Then seemingly out of nowhere, Archie made the leap to American television landing the role of Kalinda Sharma, the in-house private investigator in The Good Wife. It was a surprising, but wise, choice with The Good Wife being an immediate break-out hit of the fall season. It is perhaps due to Ridley Scott that Archie scored the pivotal role in The Good Wife, for he had previously cast her in The Good Year as Russell Crowe’s mischievous assistant. Scott said that Archie is “smart and sensitive enough as an actress to make anything fly, comedy or drama, an unusual talent. It was a real pleasure to work with someone so enthusiastic.” Clearly, he is a fan and one of her strongest advocates.

From the first second Archie appeared on screen as the street-savvy investigator in The Good Wife, she lit up the screen. Her inner joy with life is hard to suppress on screen, but she rises to the challenge of tough roles and manages to make ethereal beauty look dangerous and deceptive. Despite working full-time on The Good Wife, Archie also has taken on a series of upcoming film projects, perhaps to keep her busy during her next hiatus. She will next be working on The Infidel with Richard Schiff (The West Wing) and House Husbands with Marsha Thomason (Lost).

In the meantime, be sure to catch her subtly stunning performance in The Good Wife, Tuesdays at 10/9c on CBS.