in Chikamatsu Monzaemon's Fair Ladies at a Game of Poem Cards that was performed at Cottesloe, Royal National Theatre. Despite lacking formal theatrical training, Nagra signed with Joan Brown, a veteran London-based agent, after which she was cast in minor television roles in the British medical drama series Casualty, and in the television film King Girl, in which she played an abusive member of an all-girl gang. In 1997, Nagra appeared in the three-part drama Turning World alongside Roshan Seth. The following year, she appeared on Casualty again. In 1999, she played a convenience store clerk in the television film Donovan Quick, opposite Colin Firth. Also of note were appearances on the British comedy Goodness Gracious Me. Nagra also co-starred in radio plays including, among others, plays by Tanika Gupta. In 1998, Nagra co-starred in the radio play Dancing Girls of Lahore which was co-written by her future Bend It Like Beckham co-star Shaheen Khan. Nagra's other notable stage roles during this period include: Skeleton (1997), with critical acclaim for her "bright-eyed vivacity" as the village girl 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 Krishna's Lila—A Play of the Asian World (1999) where she was part of a five-person cast in a controversially titled piece The Square Circle (1999) in the demanding role of an illiterate peasant girl who becomes a rape victim River on Fire (2000), as Kiran, in a retelling of Sophocles' Antigone In 2001, Nagra voiced a Muslim girl in the docu-drama Arena: The Veil about women who choose to wear the Muslim head scarf. In 1997, not long after Fair Ladies at a Game of Poem Cards, Nagra was cast in Oh Sweet Sita, an adaptation of Indian mythology about Rama and his wife Sita, in the title role of Sita. During that time, Nagra caught the attention of director Gurinder Chadha. Bend It Like Beckham Nagra played the lead role in Gurinder Chadha's 2002 comedy-drama Bend It Like Beckham, which became her breakthrough film, alongside Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Anupam Kher, Shaheen Khan, and Keira Knightley, for whom this film also became a career breakthrough. It was directed by Chadha. Nagra played Jesminder "Jess" Bhamra, a teenage Sikh football player who