1990s to early 2000s Nagra left Leicester for
London and decided not to go to university. Instead she pursued her childhood ambition of becoming an actress. •
A Tainted Dawn (1997) where she played a
Hindu boy accidentally left in
Pakistan and brought up by a Muslim couple •
Fourteen Songs, Two Weddings & A Funeral (1998) where she showed her skills as a romantic comedian, also to critical acclaim Acknowledging Nagra's actual burn-scarred leg, Chadha wrote it into the film. Nagra received critical and professional acclaim for her performance. She was nominated, and won, several awards, including the
FIFA Presidential Award (2002), making her the first woman to have done so.
2002–2019 Not long after filming ended on
Bend It Like Beckham, Nagra co-starred in the fantasy romantic comedy
Ella Enchanted alongside
Anne Hathaway where she played Areida, the best friend of Hathaway's's title character. science fiction drama series
Alcatraz, along with fellow actors
Jorge Garcia and
Sarah Jones While on a promotional junket in
Los Angeles for
Bend It Like Beckham, Nagra was informed by her agent that
John Wells, one of the producers of the
NBC medical drama series
ER, was interested in meeting her. Nagra made her first appearance on
ER on 25 September 2003, in the tenth-season premiere titled "Now What?" as
Neela Rasgotra, a new
Yale-educated Anglo-Indian medical student at County General Hospital. Wells adapted the role to suit Nagra, so she could use her own English accent while working. Nagra appeared in twenty-one of the season's twenty-two episodes, including the twelfth episode titled "NICU" and the seventeenth episode titled "The Student", episodes in which her character played a central role.
Noah Wyle, announcing his departure from the series in 2004, described Nagra as "the future" of
ER, and the media concurred, anointing her as one of the show's "golden girls". In October 2008, following the departures of
Goran Višnjić,
Maura Tierney, and
Mekhi Phifer, Nagra became the longest-serving cast member and lead actor of
ER and remained so until just before the series concluded--she left the main cast in the penultimate episode. When Nagra finished filming the eleventh season of
ER in 2005, she returned to her native Leicester to star in
Love in Little India directed by Amit Gupta. She was nominated in 2006 for an Asian Excellence Award, in the category of Outstanding Female Television Performance, for her work in
ER, and won the award the following year. In 2008, Nagra voiced Cassandra in the
DC animated film
Batman: Gotham Knight. She played Miss Lovely in the children's film
Horrid Henry: The Movie (2011). Nagra starred as CIA agent Meera Malik in the first season of the NBC crime drama series
The Blacklist from 2013 to 2014. In 2016, Nagra joined the second series of the psychological thriller
Fortitude. In 2018, she joined the second season of the
Netflix television series
13 Reasons Why as Priya Singh, the new counsellor of Liberty High.
2020s Nagra starred as the titular character of the
ITV series
DI Ray. The first series of four episodes aired in 2022, with a second series of six episodes beginning filming in May 2023. and broadcast from 16 June 2024. ==Personal life==