TORONTO—Seema Biswas is one of Bollywood’s biggest stars, but she’s becoming a fixture in Canadian films too.

Biswas was named best actress by the Indian National Film Awards for her Bollywood film debut in Shekhar Kapur's Bandit Queen in 1994 and she won the same title from the 2006 Genies for her Canadian debut in Deepa Mehta’s Water. She’s set to star in Mehta’s upcoming feature about the Komagata Maru. And her new Canadian feature, Amal—directed by Richie Mehta (no relation to Deepa)—opens in Vancouver on Friday (August 8).

Sitting in a guest room at the Hotel Intercontinental just before Amal’s world premiere at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival, Biswas says she’s just as happy acting in Canada as India.

“I don’t define or put a line between commercial film or serious film or Canadian film or Indian film. For me, I love acting. Whether it is on television, whether it is on stage, whether it is on film—in any language—I want to be part of the universe.”

Biswas was drawn to the universe of Amal—a modern-day fairy tale about a rickshaw driver and a billionaire—when she met Richie Mehta at the 2005 Toronto International Film Festival, which she was attending to promote Water.

He handed her a DVD of his short film, Amal (which is based on a short story by his brother, Shaun), but before Biswas had a chance to watch it, Mehta and his producers handed her the script for a full-length feature version of the same story and offered her the role of a lawyer who’s determined to find the mystery man who has inherited a fortune.

“I read the script and I found it very interesting because it’s a very simple, ordinary script where we were not saying so many big, big things. It’s not an emotional story that way...it is very subdued. It’s a very human, heartwarming story.”

Audiences clearly agree. Since its debut last fall, the film has picked up viewers’-choice awards at festivals in Canada, the U.S., and the Bahamas. It was also named one of Canada’s top 10 features of 2007 by the Toronto International Film Festival Group.

Amal is a bilingual film—English and Hindi—and Biswas is a multilingual performer. Her parents are Bengali, but she was born and raised in Assam. “So I know far better the Assamese language and Assamese culture,” says Biswas.

She studied theatre at the National School of Drama in Delhi, where she joined its repertory company and acted in about 50 plays over the next nine years before Kapur cast her in Bandit Queen. Her new film career moved her to Bombay, where she soon performed in English for the first time.

Biswas says she still tends to think in Assamese, so performing in English and Hindi is always a challenge. “As far as language is concerned, I’m master of none. Not even my mother tongue.”