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Rita Wolf
Film, theatre and television actress who starred in key British South Asian cultural productions of the 1980s and 1990s
Other names
Rita Ghose
Place of birth
About
Rita Wolf started working in youth theatre in the 1970s and made her professional debut at the Royal Court in a production of Hanif Kureishi’s Borderline, a play focused on the 1981 uprisings. She was also involved in Tara Arts’s early productions. She starred in the Retake Film and Video Collective’s groundbreaking Majdhar (1984) before taking on the role of Tania in the Hanif Kureishi-scripted and Stephen Frears-directed My Beautiful Laundrette (1985), a film that was a trail-blazer for South Asian representation on screen.
Wolf has also played roles in many television dramas, including Albion Market, Coronation Street and Farrukh Dhondy’s Tandoori Nights and Romance, Romance. Wolf's other film work includes roles in The Chain (1984), Slipstream (1989), Pratibha Parmar’s Khush (1991), Girl Six (1996) and Second Generation (2002).
In 1990, she co-founded, with Rukhsana Ahmad, Kali Theatre Company, which provided a dedicated platform to champion writing by South Asian women. Wolf directed its first production, Song for a Sanctuary, written by Ahmad.
Since 1993 Wolf has mainly resided in New York.
Film:
Majdhar (1984) as Fawzia Khan
The Chain (1984) as Carrie
My Beautiful Laundrette (1985) as Tania
Slipstream (1989) as Maya
Khush (1991)
Girl 6 (1996)
Second Generation (2003)
Theatre:
Borderline
Homebody / Kabul
The House of Bernarda Alba
The American Pilot
Chaos Theory
An Ordinary Muslim
The Michaels
Out of Time
A Delicate Balance
Television:
Wing and a Prayer (UK) (1997–9)
Calling the Shots (UK) (1994)
Coronation Street (UK) (1990) as Felicity 'Flick' Khan
Law & Order (US) (1996)
Tandoori Nights (UK) (1985–7)
The Good Wife (US) (2010)
Zaman, Amal, 'Consider the Aunty: The Obfuscation of Desire in My Beautiful Laundrette', South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 46.1 (2023), pp. 95–112
Hanif Kureishi Archive, Contemporary Collections, British Library, St Pancras
Image credit
© Remaking Britain: South Asian Connections and Networks, 1930s – present
