Bollywood Trawls London for Talent as Students Bal

Nov. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Anu Singh, once an aspiring business- school student, found a new calling when London's financial- services industry started to shrivel: Bollywood.

As India's film industry, which produces about 1,000 movies a year -- or double Hollywood's total -- casts wider for talent, Bollywood has opened a training academy in London, the first in Europe. Students include 21-year-old Singh as well as others who had considered, or were working in, business or law before the credit crisis caused banks to collapse and jobs to vanish.

"I was on a track for doing a business degree," said Singh. Instead, she's preparing for her Mumbai acting debut at the Actor Prepares school, which started its first three-month course for would-be Bollywood stars in September.

The school was founded in Mumbai in 2005 by actor Anupam Kher and has graduated almost 400 students, including Deepika Padukone, made famous for her role in "Om Shanti Om," one of the highest- grossing Hindi films ever released. There are seven students on each London-based course. Each pays 4,000 pounds ($6,190) for a shot at a role in the movies coming out of an industry that supplies theaters and television stations across India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

By 2012, Indian box office sales for local movies are forecast to rise 11 percent from this year, to $2.5 billion, according to a PriceWaterhouseCoopers report. Overseas sales may rise to $407 million, from $170 million, over the next five years, said the March report. Broadcasters are the latest outlet for Bollywood productions, bolstering demand for talent.

Rehearsal Room

"The TV industry is growing," said Hemendra Bhatia, the international dean of Actor Prepares. An estimated 70 new TV stations will start in India next year, he said. Looking around the spare, black rehearsal room where the students had spent two hours delivering lines and practicing a Bollywood dance routine, he asked, "Where are they going to get the actors?"

At the U.K. school, located at the Ealing Institute of Media in West London, the day starts at 8:30 a.m. with yoga, followed by acting classes, business principles, and instruction in Hindi diction, a second language for all the students. Course fees include a week in Mumbai, where the students perform in a short film to be aired on Sony TV Asia.

Bollywood productions are characterized by melodrama, often invoking family, duty, parents and sacrifice. Dancers and singers feature in the movies, which are mostly musicals. Storylines involve male and female leads struggling with their love lives. The word Bollywood is a portmanteau of Bombay, the former name for Mumbai, and Hollywood.

Traditional Turban

"You can love Bollywood, or hate it, but you can't ignore it," said Ranjit Singh Shubh, an athletic, 23-year-old Sikh, from East London. Coming from a strict Sikh background and wearing a turban in the traditional style of his religion, Shubh said the choice to pursue acting shocked his family. "But the Indian film industry has grown and it's making a lot of money."

Shubh's family would've preferred his becoming a programmer or getting a job in the information-technology industry. He's going into the British job market at a time when unemployment is rising at the fastest rate in 16 years. In October, the number of people receiving jobless benefits rose to its highest level since March 2001, according to the U.K.'s Office for National Statistics.

Another student, Pirah Palijo, 28, has a masters degree in international law and a diploma in globalization from Queen Mary College, in London.

"I really had to listen to my inner voice," she said.

The students who graduate from Actors Prepared will confront an industry that, while growing, remains competitive.

Eros International

"Bollywood has traditionally been a star-driven business, but with more films being released in India, there will be room for new players to come," said Jyoti Deshpande, chief operating officer for U.K. Indian movie distributor Eros International Plc.

Breaking into Indian cinema isn't easy, especially for foreign-born actors who didn't grow up speaking Hindi, the language used in about a quarter of Indian films.

Even such successful stars as Katrina Kaif, who grew up in London and grossed $14,000 for her role in "Malliswari," according to her Web site, may end up being dubbed to cover strong accents.

Still, for Singh, an American whose mother accompanied her to London and works California hours for Google Inc. so her daughter can pursue acting, learning to think in Hindi and take on the industry is worth the effort.

"With Indian cinema you're telling real stories, not just playing the stereotype," she said.