Indira Varma

 ( Living People ) 

Her first television appearance was in 1996 in Crucial Tales. An early television role was the young Roman wife Niobe Vorena in the 2005 first series of BBC/HBO's award-winning historical drama Rome. Her character appeared briefly in the second series when it was shown on 14 January 2007. "Vorenus Hearts Varma" , Nirali Magazine Blog

In 2006 she played Suzie Costello in the first and eighth episodes, "Everything Changes" and "They Keep Killing Suzie", of BBC Three's science-fiction drama series Torchwood. She appeared as Dr Adrienne Holland in the CBS medical drama 3 lbs which premiered on 14 November 2006 and was cancelled on 30 November 2006 due to poor ratings. Varma guest starred in the fourth-season premiere of hit US detective drama Bones as Scotland Yard Inspector Cate Pritchard. She also played the role of Zoe Luther in the first series of the BBC drama Luther.

Varma played the role of Ilsa Pucci in the second season of the Fox series Human Target until the show was cancelled on 10 May 2011.

In 2014, Varma was cast as Ellaria Sand, the Extramarital sex of Oberyn Martell in season 4 of the HBO series Game of Thrones. She played the role through season 7.

She lent her voice to the Circle mage Vivienne, in the 2014 role-playing video game . Later on, she also gave her voice to Katherine Proudmoore in , one of the most recent expansion in the MMO role-playing game World of Warcraft.

In 2016, she played the lead role of DC Nina Suresh in the eight-episode British television drama Paranoid, streamed worldwide on Netflix.

Varma portrays a reform-minded corrections official in the 2020 ABC legal drama For Life, and appears as the double agent Tala Durith in the Obi-Wan Kenobi series for Disney+, as well as playing the head of an American intelligence agency in .

In 2022, Varma began narrating the Witches series of audio books by Terry Pratchett.

In May 2023, it was announced that Varma would portray The Duchess in the fourteenth season of Doctor Who in the episode Rogue.

In 2002, she played Sasha Lebedieff in Ivanov by Anton Chekhov at the National Theatre and Bunty Mainwaring in The Vortex by Noël Coward at the Donmar Warehouse, London. In 2004, she played Sabina in The Skin of Our Teeth by Thornton Wilder at the Young Vic Theatre Theatre, London. In 2008, she played Nadia Baliye in The Vertical Hour by David Hare at the Royal Court Theatre London. In 2009, she played Olivia in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night with Donmar West End at Wyndham's Theatre, London. In 2012, she played Jessica in Terry Johnson's Hysteria at the Theatre Royal, Bath. In 2013 she played Miss Cutts in The Hothouse by Harold Pinter in the Trafalgar Transformed season at Trafalgar Studios.

In 2014, Varma played Tamora, Queen of the Goths, in Lucy Bailey's "gore-fest" production of Titus Andronicus at Shakespeare's Globe. In 2015, she appeared alongside Ralph Fiennes in George Bernard Shaw's Man and Superman at the National Theatre. In 2020, pre-lockdown, she starred in Chekhov's The Seagull as Irina alongside Game of Thrones co-star Emilia Clarke at the Playhouse Theatre. Her 2019 performance in Present Laughter at The Old Vic theatre earned Varma a Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role.

In 2023-2024 she played Lady Macbeth opposite Ralph Fiennes in Macbeth at a number of UK theatres and at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington D.C. She was awarded a Helen Hayes Award for her performance. She returned to The Old Vic in 2025 in Oedipus opposite Rami Malek and received her second Olivier nomination.