敏迪·卡灵

薇拉·敏迪·乔卡灵加姆（英语：Vera Mindy Chokalingam，1979年6月24日—），艺名敏迪·卡灵（英语：Mindy Kaling）是一名美国女演员、喜剧演员、作家、制作人和导演。

她因在美国电视剧《爆笑办公室》、《怪咖妇产科》和电影《瞒天过海：八面玲珑》、《时间的皱折》中的演出获得知名度。她亦创造了不少知名喜剧影集，像是《黄金单身爸》、《好想做一次》、《你是我今生的新娘》以及《怪咖妇产科》。她的配音作品则有《神偷奶爸》、《无敌破坏王》、《脑筋急转弯》。

早年生活

她的父亲是建筑师，母亲则是妇产科医师，两人皆来自印度，并于1979年移民美国，同年卡灵出生。

Vera Mindy Chokalingam (born June 24, 1979), known professionally as Mindy Kaling, is an American actress, comedian, screenwriter, and producer. Known for her work on television, she has received a Tony Award and six nominations at the Primetime Emmy Awards. Among other honors, she has also received the National Medal of the Arts in 2021 and the Producers Guild of America's Norman Lear Achievement in Television Award in 2023. Kaling founded the production company Kaling International in 2012.

Kaling first gained recognition for playing Kelly Kapoor in the NBC sitcom The Office (2005–2013), on which she also worked as a writer. Credited with twenty-four episodes, Kaling was the most prolific writer among the staff. For her work on it, she was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series. She gained wider attention for creating, producing and playing the title role in the sitcom The Mindy Project (2012–2017). She then created other television comedies, including Never Have I Ever (2020–2023), The Sex Lives of College Girls (2021–2025), Running Point (2025–present), and Not Suitable for Work (2026).

Her film career includes voice roles in Despicable Me (2010), Wreck-It Ralph (2012), Mr. Peabody & Sherman (2014), and Inside Out (2015) as well as live action roles in No Strings Attached (2011), The Five-Year Engagement (2012), A Wrinkle in Time (2018), Ocean's 8 (2018), and Late Night (2019), the last of which she also wrote and produced. She has written two memoirs both reaching The New York Times Best Seller list. She also received a Tony Award for Best Musical as a producer for the musical A Strange Loop.

Early life and education

Vera Mindy Chokalingam was born June 24, 1979, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to a Tamil father, Avudaiappan Chokalingam and a Bengali mother, Swati Roy Sircar. Her parents who were then living in Nigeria, immigrated to the United States in 1979 with her elder brother, Vijay Chokalingam.

Her father was an architect, and mother was an obstetrician/gynecologist at St. Elizabeth's Medical Center, Boston.

Her mother died of pancreatic cancer in 2012.

Kaling has said she has never been called Vera, her first name, but has been referred to as Mindy since her mother was pregnant with her while her parents were living in Nigeria. They were already planning to move to the United States and wanted, Kaling said, a "cute American name" for their daughter, and liked the name Mindy from the show Mork & Mindy.

Kaling graduated from Buckingham Browne & Nichols School in 1997. The following year, she entered Dartmouth College, where she was a member of improvisational comedy troupe The Dog Day Players and a cappella group The Rockapellas, and wrote for the Dartmouth Jack-O-Lantern, the college's humor magazine. Kaling graduated from Dartmouth in 2001 with a bachelor's degree in playwriting. She lists the comedy series Dr. Katz, Saturday Night Live, Frasier and Cheers as early influences on her comedy.

Career

2002–2004: Career beginnings

While a 19-year-old sophomore at Dartmouth, Kaling was an intern on Late Night with Conan O'Brien. She has said that she never saw a family like hers on TV, which gave her a dual perspective she uses in her writing. She thinks the "everyone against me" mentality is what she learned as a child of immigrants. She named her Mindy Project character Mindy Lahiri after author Jhumpa Lahiri. After college, she moved to Brooklyn, New York. She said one of her worst job experiences was as a production assistant for three months on the Crossing Over With John Edward psychic show. She described it as "depressing." During this same time, she performed stand-up comedy.