Freida Pinto biography

Full Name: Freida Pinto
Occupation: Actress / Model
Date of Birth: October 18, 1984
Place of Birth: Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
Age: 25
Hair / Eyes: Brown / Brown
Family: Mother Sylvia Pinto (a principal of St. John’s High School), Father Frederick Pinto (a senior branch manager at the Bank of Baroda) and older sister Sharon Pinto (an associate producer on the NDTV news channel).
Claim to Fame: Playing Latika in Slumdog Millionaire.
Freida Pinto was born in Mumbai, India, on October 18, 1984. Her father is a banker, while her mother is the principal of a High School. Her sister, Sharon, is a producer at the Indian news channel, NDTV. Freida earned a bachelor’s degree in English at the St. Xavier’s College in Mumbai, and got recruited by the Elite model agency in India at age 20. She has then done campaigns for such companies as Chanel, Visa and eBay.
In 2006-2007, she anchored the TV travel show Full Circle, and visited several Asian countries such as Afghanistan, Fiji, Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore.

Freida always knew she wanted to be an actress, professional or not. Though with the high standards of India’s response to Hollywood – Bollywood – it’s very difficult to get ahead. As Freida put it: “You have to be a child of an actor or actress, or have a godfather.”
Her one in a life time-chance came with Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire, which was to be filmed in the city of Mumbai, India. When Boyle saw Freida’s tape he immediately asked for her to come to the audition. But since she had no acting experience, they put her through an entire process of auditioning for six months. “The first time I read with the casting director and the second time on it was with Danny Boyle. I would go in probably once a month, sometimes twice a month and every time I’d go in for an audition Danny would say ‘Fantastic. I’ll see you again’. So every time he said that I’d say, ‘Okay, maybe in three days’. 30 days! He’d just keep me waiting for 30 days. I think every time I went in was fun. I’m not complaining because I think it was literally like going to an acting school and I think it was necessary because since I had absolutely no acting experience besides the amateur theatre that I’d done.”
Boyle followed his gut feeling and Freida was cast as Latika, the long-lost love interest of the movie’s main character, Jamal (played by the talented Dev Patel). “I put 23 years of research into this film, not knowing I was going to play this part”, Freida said. When Slumdog Millionaire premiered at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival in September 2008, the movie and its stars received rave reviews. Viewers have described the movie with words as “a masterpiece” and “one in a million”. And it truly is.
Already at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival, Freida received the “People’s Choice” award, and has since then been honored with a “Breakthrough Performance” award at the 2009 Palm Springs International Film Festival Awards as well as a BAFTA nomination for “Best Supporting Actress”. Slumdog Millionaire itself was nominated for practically every major award at every ceremony, and won Golden Globes for “Best Motion Picture – Drama”, “Best Director”, “Best Original Screenplay” and “Best Adapted Screenplay”. The Oscar buzz continued to surround the movie as it won all the major awards at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, Writers Guild Awards, Directors Guild Awards and the U.K. based BAFTA Awards. So on Oscar-night, February 22 2009, it was no surprise to see it win eight of the ten awards it was nominated for. Among them was Best Movie, Best Director, Best Screenplay and more.
During the ’09 award season Freida Pinto emerged as a style-icon, having the most raved and talked-about outfits of the season. In March 2009 she was invited to sit front row at the Fashion Week in Paris and Milan. But her fashion-related career didn’t stop there, as she was announced as a new spokesmodel for L’Oreal Paris later in 2009. “I am very moved to be joining the great L’Oreal Paris family and all these personalities: a family I am now proud to be a part of”, Freida said of joining the worldwide beauty brand. Since then she’s appeared in two campaigns for L’Oreal.
On the night of the Oscars Freida announced that she would star in a movie directed and written by Woody Allen. The movie, titled You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, was filmed in London, England during the summer of 2009. Also starring are Naomi Watts, Antonio Banderas, Josh Brolin and Anthony Hopkins. The movie premiered to mostly good reviews at the Cannes Film Festival on May 15, 2010.
Freida kept busy the entire spring of 2009 as well, as she filmed the movie Miral in Jerusalem. The film is directed by Julian Schnabel and centers around Hind Husseini’s effort to establish an orphanage in Jerusalem after the 1948 partition of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel. Freida Pinto portrays the title character of Miral. The movie is generating Oscar-buzz for both Freida and Hiam Abbass (Hind Husseini), as the movie is loved by the critics who’ve seen it. Miral is set to premiere at the Venice Film Festival on September 2.
In February 2010 Variety reported that Freida were to take part in yet another movie; War of the Gods. She will play Phaedra, an oracle priestess who must join Theseus (played by Henry Cavill) on his quest to prevent the cataclysmic war between the gods from erupting. This project, directed by Tarsem Singh, started filming in April in Montreal, Canada. The film would later be renamed Immortals and have cast members such as Mickey Rourke, Isabel Lucas, Stephen Dorff and more. Immortals is scheduled for a release on November 11, 2011.
Though this isn’t enough for Freida, as she’s currently filming the prequel to Planet of the Apes, called Rise of the Apes in Canada. She portrays the lab scientist Caroline in the “origin story set in present day San Francisco, where man’s own experiments with genetic engineering lead to the development of intelligence in apes and the onset of a war for supremacy”. The movie also stars James Franco, John Lithgow, Brian Cox and Andy Serkins. Rise of the Apes will be released on June 24, 2011.
“After this success, I still consider myself to be a regular Mumbai girl. I’m just one that has been extremely blessed.” Not knowing what the future holds for her, Freida recently signed with one of the leading talent agencies in the world – CAA. She dreams of one day star be able to work with seasoned actors like Leonardo DiCaprio and Johnny Depp. “I think they are simply fantastic and so versatile. I would love to do a dark romantic film with Johnny Depp.” I think it’s safe to say that this rising star isn’t done yet.