Mira Nair Biography

Mira Nair is an international filmmaker born on October 15, 1957 in Rourkela, Orissa, India. She hails from a social issues juggling family as her father was a civil servant while her mother was a social worker. As a child she grew up in boarding school and then got her masters degree in Sociology from the prestigious Miranda University. During her college days in Delhi, she was often spotted performing street dramas. Later she got qualified for a scholarship at Harvard University. She met Sooni Taraporevala in Harvard, who has written screenplay for her most of the movies.

Before stepping into the film industry, Mira molded her directorial skill with a documentary 'So Far From India' and then with 'India Cabaret' based on the lives of club strippers in India. It brought her recognition at the American Film Festival.

In 1988, 'Salaam Bombay' marked her feature film debut, which won her Golden Camera award at the Cannes Film Festival and a nominee for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Whatever proceeds she earned from it, she used it to set up an organization named Salaam Baalak Trust for street children in India. Next was 'Mississippi Masala', which starred Denzel Washington and Sharmila Tagore, was about a family in Uganda and the political position which forces them out of the country and to Mississippi. In 1995 she directed a comedy 'The Perez Family' while her film 'Kama Sutra - A Tale Of Love' explored relationships on the premise of love and lust. Followed by a series of successful films like 'Monsoon Wedding', 'Hysterical Blindness', '110901', 'Vanity Fair', 'The Namesake', 'Amelia' and 'The Reluctant Fundamentalist'. Here movies always had a social message to give besides the varied genre.

Mira holds the record of earning nominees and number of awards including National Film Award, BAFTA Awards, Golden Globes and Filmfares. She has been awarded India's third highest civilian award Padma Bhushan in 2012.

On the personal front, Mira was first married to renowned photographer Mitch Epstein whom she met at Harvard. He has done the cinematography and production designing for her films 'Salaam Bombay' and 'Mississippi Masala'. Her second marriage is with Professor Mahmood Mamdani and has a son named Zohran with him. Besides, filmmaking she also works as an adjunct professor in the Film Division of School of Arts in Columbia.