Sakina Jaffrey

Jaffrey was born in New York City, the youngest daughter of Indian-born parents, actress and food and travel writer Madhur Jaffrey, and actor Saeed Jaffrey. Her parents divorced when she was three years old, and she grew up estranged from her father, who subsequently moved to the United Kingdom.[1]

Jaffrey picked up her love of Chinese culture from her elder sister, Meera. She graduated from Vassar College in 1984, with a major in Chinese Language and Literature at the college, originally planning to be a translator before she became an actress.[2]

She lives in Nyack, New York with her husband, Francis Wilkinson, a journalist, and their two children, Cassius and Jamila.

Jaffrey appeared with her father in the film Masala (1991) and with her mother in The Perfect Murder (1988). In 2002, she appeared in The Truth About Charlie starring Mark Wahlberg. Her children Cassius and Jamila appear with her in Raising Helen (2004) and in The Ode (2008).

She starred as Linda Vasquez, the White House Chief of Staff, in the Netflix series House of Cards (2013). In 2014, it was announced that she would be appearing in the second season of Fox's television series Sleepy Hollow as Leena Reyes, the new sheriff.

From 2016 to 2018, she had a starring role in the NBC television series Timeless as Homeland Security Agent Denise Christopher.

She also starred as Malini Soni in The Meyerowitz Stories, a 2017 comedy-drama film directed by Noah Baumbach and costarring Dustin Hoffman and Adam Sandler.

• Sakina Jaffrey at IMDb