Amara Karan, who famously banned her mother from seeing her big break film The Darjeeling Limited because of her raunchy kissing scenes, had no trouble letting her orthodox mum see St Tinian's, a harmless comedy about a group of girls who use some unorthodox methods to save their financially tottering school.

Also see: The Darjeeling Limited

The film, which opens in America in a few weeks, has become one of the solid hits in the United Kingdom grossing $20 million -- 15 times the money made by The Darjeeling Limited.

"I enjoyed working in both the films but what I am really looking forward is to play a lead character," says Amara, 23, whose Tamil parents moved to the United Kingdom from Sri Lanka [Images] via Zambia, two years before she was born. "You get quite a bit of power when you play the lead role"

Though The Darjeeling Limited got mixed reviews, Amara got plenty of good press.

'The charm, presence and sweetness of Karan's performance as an alluring railway waitress is the one thing everyone seems to agree on,' wrote The Guardian, the prestigious British publication.

Amara is still to get a lead but she is certainly going places, having been cast in plays by Royal Shakespeare Company. She is in The Taming of the Shrew as well as The Merchant Of Venice.

She says she enjoys being on the stage and in films, and she certainly doesn't want to go back to the world of finance. Her mother hopes the acting passion will die out soon but Amara says it is no more a passing fancy.

But she also admits that she had regarded acting as a risky profession and that is why went to study politics, philosophy and economics at Oxford and spent two years working in the City of London [Images] dealing in mergers and acquisitions.

"But there was this emptiness within myself," she says. "I knew I loved theater and films, and that is why I spent quite a bit of time working in plays at Oxford."

At one point over two-and-a-half years ago, the craving for more stage and film work became so strong, she began taking acting classes and soon she was auditioning for several films.

"I am a persistent person," she says. "But I don't tell people about the auditions till I get a part. For there is too much to explain if one audition doesn't work out."

Photograph: Getty Images