New York based British actor Linus Roache best known as the Legal Eagle in the long-running American serial Law & Order recently shot Santosh Sivan's Before The Rains in Kerala. He speaks to Subhash K Jha about his near-umbilical connection with India.

You're deeply bonded with India, have spent a great deal of time here meditating and imbibing the culture. Pl tell me about your connectivity with this country?
My connection started when my late mother took me out of school to join her on the set of Jewel In the Crown when I was 16 years old.

I have since travelled to India numerous times to attend retreats with my spiritual teacher Andrew Cohen. It is my third home and the place where the soul can breathe. I have now been fortunate to make two movies India and travel in both the north and the south.

How did you end up doing Before The Rains? Did you connect with the theme of colonial oppression, love, lust and betrayal?
I had done a small independent movie in the US which Andy Spaulding and Doug Mankoff, two of the producers from BTR, had made and they always had me in mind for the part of protagonist.

I liked the script but it wasn't until I met Santosh and saw his movie Terrorist that I realized that I would be part of something that would have enormous vision and scope and not just a period movie. What I connected to in the story was really the moral demise of a man who wants everything and ends up with nothing.

To me it was more of a morality tale and an exploration of how cultures clash even today. It was a rich, complex and totally human story with no villains and no comic book hero's.

You had earlier done Mira Nair's The Namesake, though not as pivotal a role as this...Which of the two were more enjoyable experiences?
My part in the Namesake was purely a result of bumping into Mira at a Yoga class here in New York. I did it for fun one afternoon. She is a wonderful director and a great person but the experiences are not comparable.

My work on Namesake was half a day in a school in NYC and Before The Rains was a seven- week shoot in one of the most beautiful places in the world with a visionary director and was one of the greatest film making experiences I have ever had.

You're most well known for your tv series Law & Order. How much of your time has that series and the role taken of your life? Does it get cumbersome to be constantly doing the same thing, albeit in a series that's brought you massive popularity?
I love my role on Law and Order. We shoot nine months of the year and it is very consuming but it is a smart, intelligent extremely well written show that to me represents some of the best of American televison. It is a privilege to work with such great people and our supporting casts consist of some of the finest Actors in the US.

Has it been easy to make the transition from theatre to television to cinema?
I've always enjoyed versatility and different genres. It is a very different experience to be shooting episodic television every eight days to being absorbed in a feature film for seven weeks. They are apples and oranges! I love both. Right now I love the challenge of entering new stories and developing a character over a long period of time.