(April 12, 2026) From night classes after long days in healthcare communications to appearing alongside one of Hollywood’s biggest stars in one of 2026’s most anticipated sci-fi blockbusters, British-Indian actor Priya Kansara’s route to the screen was anything but conventional.
Project Hail Mary, the Amazon MGM adaptation of Andy Weir’s bestselling novel, released in cinemas on 20 March 2026 has so far earned approximately $450 million worldwide. It follows astronaut Ryland Grace, played by Ryan Gosling, a Canadian actor who has spent two decades earning a reputation as one of the most versatile and critically respected performers in Hollywood, with films including The Notebook, Drive, La La Land and Barbie to his name. In the film, he wakes on an interstellar spacecraft with no memory, tasked with saving Earth from extinction. Priya appears in a supporting role. For someone who once wasn’t sure the industry had room for her, sharing a cast list with Gosling is a long way from where this story begins.
The beginning
Born in Enfield, north London, to a family of Indian descent, Priya Kansara grew up watching two very different kinds of cinema. Her mother’s Bollywood favourites and her father’s action movies like James Bond. Mission Impossible, and Die Hard, built around spectacle, movement, and physical daring.
“I was probably too young to be watching that kind of thing,” she has said, “but it was always on the TV.” What she absorbed was something harder to name than genre preference, a sense that cinema could be a form of escape, an invitation into alternative worlds. That feeling stayed with her.
“Something that attracted me is that cinema is a form of escapism, with all these alternative worlds to get lost in, and I found that very inspiring. I think more than a particular film or person, it was my love of performance that motivated me,” she remarked.
The long way round
Priya attended Palmers Green High School and Dame Alice Owen’s School in Potters Bar before studying Molecular Biology at University College London, graduating with a BSc. Acting ran alongside all of it, drama clubs, musical theatre, every university show she could get into, but as a hobby, not a career plan.
The reasons were partly practical and partly structural. Representation on British stages and screens was thin enough that she did not feel certain there was space for her. “You don’t see a lot of yourself on screen or on stage,” she has said, “and I think that’s why I didn’t take the traditional route.” After graduating, she joined BCW Global, working in healthcare communications by day while quietly refusing to let the other ambition go.
Priya Kansara in Bridgerton, a period drama series on Netflix
For three years, until March 2021, she took evening classes at the Identity School of Acting in London while keeping her day job. “I wouldn’t necessarily recommend that to everyone because it is spreading yourself very, very thin,” she admits. “But to me it was the sacrifice that I was going to make to do what I loved, it was something I had to do.”
The decision was based on something deeper than ambition alone. For Priya, it was about seeing, for the first time, that the door might actually be open. “I didn’t study acting full-time, because I just didn’t know if I could do it, if there was the space for me. I was always acting as a hobby… By the time I graduated, I’d started to hear of and see more people like me doing it. I felt I had to take that risk.”
First audition to being named the ‘Star of Tomorrow’
When Priya finally left her job and walked into her first professional audition, she landed it. The role was Miss Eaton in season two of Bridgerton, the Shonda Rhimes-produced period drama on Netflix. A second Netflix series followed quickly, The Bastard Son & The Devil Himself. By the summer of 2022, Screen International had named her a Star of Tomorrow. The attention was well-earned, but it was the next project that would make the wider world take notice.
Polite Society
Directed by Nida Manzoor, Polite Society gave Priya her first lead role, Ria Khan, a would-be stunt performer navigating family pressure and a deep certainty that she is meant for something more than convention will allow. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2023 to immediate enthusiasm, with critics reaching for language that matched the energy Kansara brought to the screen.
Priya Kansara in Polite Society, a British action comedy
What came next
Priya’s career has moved ahead steadily since Polite Society. In 2025 she appeared in BBC One’s historical drama Dope Girls. The same year she joined the cast of Apple TV+’s Star City. Then came something altogether different.
Project Hail Mary, the commercially successful blockbuster has become one of 2026’s defining cinematic releases, and placed Priya Kansara in a cast led by one of the most decorated actors of his generation. It is a remarkable marker of how far she has travelled in a few short years, from a woman who spent her evenings at drama school because she was not sure there was a place for her on screen, to one who is now unmistakably, undeniably part of the conversation. The industry, it turns out, had plenty of room.
Film career at a glance
- 2022 — Debuts in Bridgerton (Netflix) and The Bastard Son & The Devil Himself (Netflix); named Screen International Star of Tomorrow
- 2023 — Stars in Polite Society (dir. Nida Manzoor), which premieres at Sundance; nominated at the British Independent Film Awards
- 2025 — Appears in BBC One’s Dope Girls; joins Apple TV+ series Star City
- 2026 — Appears in Project Hail Mary alongside Ryan Gosling (released 20 March)
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