| Lethal Sheetal By Lavina Melwani
Time
and the moment are on Sheetal Sheth’s side.
Nina.
Maya. Kajal. Sanjana. Sapna.
All different women. All the same woman.
Meet Sheetal Sheth, the dynamic young actress who has
brought all these very different characters to life
in a handful of independent films made in the United
States. Sheetal is a first generation Indian-American
who captures perfectly the dichotomies of growing up
Indian in America with her three dimensional portrayals
of real women.
Take Nina in ABCD: she is every Indian parent’s nightmare
— she is rebellious, sleeps around and has just not
found her anchor. Sheetal played her like a violin,
with so many nuances that you could not help but feel
sympathy for this vulnerable young woman.
“I was completely enamored of playing this amazing character.
I love this girl and I’m very protective of her,” says
Sheetal. “ She has a very tough exterior but it comes
from her having years and years of hurt. She makes very
self-destructive decisions and very negative things
around her cause her to do what she does. She still
hasn’t reached a place of self-awareness where she can
change, but I love her because I know so many women
like her.”
Indeed, young Indian Americans are sure to see glimpses
of themselves in the characters Sheetal plays in ABCD,
American Chai, Pocketful of Dreams, Indian Cowboy and
Wings of Hope. In American Chai she is Maya, a lovely
young all-rounder who dances like a dream, blending
east and western moves into her choreography. Yet, due
to parental pressure she dare not think of dance as
a career choice until her encounter with Sureel, a musician,
inspires her to follow her passion.
In the just released Wings of Hope, Sheetal plays Kajal,
who like many young Indian Americans, has grown up sheltered
in a well-to-do home where all her needs and decisions
are taken care of by her parents: “She’s naive and the
man she gets involved with gets busted and goes to jail.
She makes bad decisions but takes responsibility for
her actions.”
Sheetal knows where all these conflicts are coming from
because she herself has grown up in America with India
always on the doorstep. Her parents Rashmi Sheth, a
chemical engineer, and Rekha came to the United States
from Gujarat in 1972. Sheetal was born in Phillipsburg,
NJ, but the family relocated to Bethlehem, Penn., when
she was in the sixth grade.
Right from the start, she had to juggle two very different
worlds. Her parents, devout Jains, sent her to a Catholic
school because it had a reputation for toughness and
like all Indian parents, the Sheths stressed the importance
of education. A topnotch student, Sheetal sailed through
school: “I, non-Catholic, would often read the scriptures
at Friday mass because I was the best reader.”
Sheetal learnt to dance almost as soon as she could
walk and this became her passion in school. Growing
up with Bollywood films, she picked up Indian dance
and Hindi, but at the same time there were the American
movies at the multiplex in the mall and Michael Jackson
and Madonna videos on MTV. All these diverse influences
filtered into her dance choreography.
A straight A student, she also made it to the basketball
team and was a regular American kid, hanging out at
the mall and feasting on Doritos. Yet unlike other American
kids, she was also the president of the Hindu Youth
Association — and that’s some juggling act! Sheetal
took it all in stride since she loved organizing community
events and activities.
The acting became a natural extension
of her passion for dance and performance: “I started
acting in high school and then I couldn’t stop. I loved
performing — it seemed like something you could constantly
challenge yourself with. There’s never a pinnacle you
can really reach with it because you can always do better
and challenge yourself — and that intrigued me.”
In spite of her scholastic achievements, Sheetal opted
to study acting at the prestigious Tisch School of the
Arts at New York University and her parents didn’t pressurize
her to take on something more practical: “There were
so many other things I was good at that they just wanted
me — for my own happiness — have that stability. But
then they realized how important this was to me and
that I was independent and strong enough to be able
to make these decisions and that I would be fine.”
Tisch was invigorating because she was thrown together
with so many people all following their passion. There
were just two other Indians there and at that time Sheetal
did not even think race would matter. “For me, I didn’t
ever think it mattered that I was an Indian until I
started auditioning and going for casting. People started
telling me who I was and then only did I realize it
was going to be an issue.
“I didn’t grow up with that — I never made those race
lines myself. As an actor doing roles it shouldn’t matter
what ethnicity you are. In school, the roles were given
according to what you’re capable of — ideally that’s
how everything should be. So for me, that’s what I knew
and I was shocked to find it wasn’t always like that.”
Yet in the end, race or no race, talent does shine through.
Sheetal has received glowing reviews for each of her
films, especially ABCD from both mainstream and Indian
press. Wrote Deccan Herald about her interpretation
of the promiscuous and self-absorbed Nina, “There’s
an intensity, an emotional honesty to her acting that
is rare.” The Philadelphia Weekly wrote, “The luminous
Sheetal Sheth shines.”
Sheetal brings so much to her roles because there is
so much more to her as a person. She has taught Indian
dance to the children of her community to get them involved
with the Hindu temple; she’s been involved with Americorps,
teaching drama and dance in inner city schools; she’s
been the vice-president of Shruti, the South Asian students
association at NYU. And she’s into skydiving, hang-gliding
and bungee jumping! Slim as a reed, she’s addicted to
Doritos and is a passionate foodie who must try every
restaurant around. She graduated as a Tisch Scholar
and she also went through the classic American rites
of passage — working at McDonalds during high school
and bartending and waitressing while starting her acting
career.
What really brought all the different facets of two
worlds together for her was a solo visit to India when
she was 17. She stayed there for two months, studying
Jainism with an “amazing” teacher and learning to read
and write Gujarati.
This was a far cry from acting, but as she says: “That
helped to put everything in perspective for me and gave
me the spiritual grounding. I think the reason I have
been somewhat successful is because I have that around
me and that helps me from drifting off. It allows me
to be who I am and not get carried away, especially
in Los Angeles where the business can suck you dry.”
Besides acting in the five films that have won awards
at various film festivals, she also bagged the Best
Actress Award for Wings of Hope at New York’s Cinevue
Festival. She got her breakthrough into mainstream television
with a major supporting role in NBC’s Movie of the Week,
The Princess and the Marine. She played Leyla, a veil-wearing
conservative girl and enjoyed the challenge of playing
that very different role.
Sheetal has acted in commercials for TheTruth.com’s
anti-smoking ads and has moved to Los Angeles to take
on her acting career full steam in television and films.
Being there has opened many doors and opportunities.
She was selected over 2,000 aspiring actresses for a
lead role in a pilot for a major network that she cannot
name right now. If all goes well and it gets picked
up for a series, she will be seen in living rooms across
America. “It’s a waiting game,” she cautions. “Only
five new shows get picked from about 20 pilots.”
As part of the handful of Indian American actors who
are breaking into film, theater and television, she
says: “We haven’t waited for anyone to give us the breaks
— we’ve made our own movies and told our own stories.
We are talented and we are good and there are more people
doing it than you would expect. There are just so many
South Asians in the arts and that’s amazing.”
She believes it’s long overdue for Indian American actors
to have mainstream careers and that things are now changing.
She adds, “We are the new generation here and Hollywood
will have to take notice of us — and it has already.
We are beginning to break through so I think it’s really
our time now.”
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