Parminder Nagra

I’m a British intern going in. I’m hoping that John will just kind of tackle it from who this person is and what she’s about rather than trying to go in on her culture. We need to move a step forward than that.

I was worried people would laugh at me when I started to talk the language, but they were just pleasantly surprised that I could. The sense of humour here is great – once I could have a giggle, I settled down.

But we had a fantastic coach, Simon Clifford, who runs a British football youth game which teaches Brazilian techniques – which is what we wanted to incorporate into the film. And some of those things we eventually got in.

Football is a passion that she holds dear to her heart. She’s really going for her dream and there are obstacles in the way, but deep down she knows what she wants, and she pursues that.

There’s apparently soccer leagues that they’ve set up with young Indian girls.

In terms of soccer, it wasn’t really a thing that girls did. In England it more kind of Net Ball and Hockey and stuff like that in athletics. It’s to each their own, really.

That’s what I like about acting. When you’re preparing for a role, you do your research, and the bonus is you get to learn these skills. Now, it’s on to whatever the next thing is I have to learn.

No, I didn’t quite know to what extent the football might be, but it was quite a bonus for me to try to learn new skills and to keep fit at the same time.

In London there was an article about all these girls bending it like Beckham, and in India there’s this big wave of girls playing football. Wow! I can’t believe a movie’s done this!

Therefore reinforcing a stereotype, therefore thinking that the entire Indian culture is just made of people that are against their children’s decisions.

I really identified with Jess, because my own dream was acting, which isn’t the most conventional profession.

In terms of the frustration of my character, I suppose any teenager has probably gone through that, in terms of telling their parents, I want to do one thing, and their parent says no. I think parents sometimes forget that they were children.

And of course in America you’ve got American football and baseball and all those other ball games, soccer has become a little niche that the women have kind of filled.

At times those skills were really hard to do because not only was I having to contend with the camera, but I was having to learn these new skills and the ball was always kind of doing what you didn’t want it to do. So it got a little bit frustrating at times but we got there.

My father in the film – which we probably haven’t seen in previous movies, and in British Asian movies you could probably count on one hand – he says exactly why, actually why he’s frightened for his daughter. He came to this country, England, and had a bit of a crappy time.

If I can inspire someone to go in a positive way and pursue a dream, it can only be good.

It’s been really nice to see different counties that I might never have visited before.

I got to go to Malaysia, Germany, Switzerland, Madrid, America.

Before I started doing the film and when I found out I was going to be doing it, I just decided to pump up on the whole cardio stuff. Just in terms of stamina.

I’m actually going in to ER as the new British intern.

But I think it’s also hard to get into soccer here. I think purely on a time level on television as well because of the ad breaks. It’s something to do with that as well. You can’t show a complete soccer match here. Which I kind of find a bit of an odd thing.

But it’s a very universal story and the thing is I was reluctant to answer that question because I don’t want people latching on to a particular stereotype.