Janina Gavankar

Janina is an actress and musician, who is also talented as a pianist, vocalist and orchestral percussionist. Her mother is half-Indian and she says proudly, “My father and mother didn’t want us to have one foot in and one foot out, so we were really proud of being Indian. We felt special because there weren’t really any of us in Joliet (U.S.)’’. Her character Papi, a lesbian in the television drama series, The L Word is one of her most outstanding role along with other television series such as The Gates, Ms. Dewey, True Blood etc.

Gavankar has acted in theatre, film, television, and online.

In 2008, she was nominated for an Asian Excellence Award and in 2012, she was honoured with  the Gravity Summit Award for Excellence in Social Media

Gavankar majored in Theatre Performance at the University of Illinois at Chicago.