Ayesha Dharker

"I can't honestly say I spent hours agonizing over it, because I didn't. It was five lines, and the costume did all the acting for me. It's on the page and you do it. But it was incredible fun and I had a great time doing it."

―Ayesha Dharker, about the making of Episode II^[1]

Ayesha Dharker (born March 16, 1977) is an Indian actress who played Queen Jamillia in Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones.

Biography[]

Dharker was born in Bombay, India. Her father, Anil Dharker, is an Indian columnist and her mother, Imtiaz Dharker, a British-Pakistani poet, artist and documentary filmmaker.

She made her screen debut in François Villiers's film Manika: Une vie plus tard. Dharker subsequently went on to star in many American, French and Indian films. She also appeared in several British TV series, such as Doctors, Cutting It, Waking the Dead, Coronation Street and The Indian Doctor. She is best known to fans for appearing in Doctor Who in the episode "Planet of the Ood" as the character Solana Mercurio.

Dharker also played the lead role of Malli in the film The Terrorist, for which she won Best Artistic Contribution award at the 1998 Cairo International Film Festival. It was her role in this film that brought Dharker to the attention of Robin Gurland, the casting director for Attack of the Clones.^[1]

Theatrically, Dharker played several stage roles, including Scheherazade in the Royal Shakespeare Company's version of the Arabian Nights and Mephastophilis in the Bristol Old Vic's version of Doctor Faustus.

In 2000, Dharker appeared with Hugh Quarshie (Captain Quarsh Panaka) in the two-part TV miniseries Arabian Nights. In 2008, she shared the screen with David Tennant (voice of Huyang in The Clone Wars) in one episode of Doctor Who.