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Delicately beautiful Indian actress Nandana Sen grew up with a prestigious, distinguished lineage as the daughter of Bengali author Nabanita Dev Sen and Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen. A young woman who came of age on multiple continents (she spent various periods of her childhood in America, Europe, and India), Sen formally studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and the Lee Strasberg Theater Institute, and experienced her first taste of cinema while still a student when director Goutam Ghose tapped her to play the lead in his dark and disturbing psychodrama The Doll as one of the targets of a middle-aged man's sexual obsession. After teaming up on a succession of projects with Indian directors including Ram Gopal Varma and Nitin Manmohan, Sen signed for one of the principal roles in the jarring, terrorist-themed psychological drama The War Within (2005), and in the process both made a name for herself and began to cultivate a reputation for being drawn to offbeat, challenging, and demanding roles. Additional assignments that Sen chose, such as the period romance Rang Rasiya (as an artist's childlike muse) and the slick British thriller The Strangers (as a sexy, streetwise young woman romantically desired by two different men) further underscored this reputation. In 2007, Sen signed on to portray a young rebellious woman fleeing from law authorities in director Shamim Sarif's lesbian-themed period drama The World Unseen.