Actress Nandita Das will travel next month to France to sit on the Cannes Film Festival jury, the second Indian star to serve since former Miss World Aishwarya Rai in 2003, a family member said on Wednesday.

Das, who is currently in New York, will be the second actress from outside France to be a jury member at Cannes this year along with Hollywood sex symbol Salma Hayek.

"She will be the jury member for this year's Cannes festival," her husband Saumya Sen said. "I do not know other details, but Nandita will issue a statement once she comes back from New York."

Das, daughter of renowned Indian painter Jatin Das, has acted in two dozen Indian films, some in regional languages, and has often declined lucrative roles in candyfloss Bollywood films.

Unlike Rai, who is a fully-fledged Bollywood starlet, Das has acted in socially relevant movies like Hazar Charausi Ki Maa , 1947: Earth , Bawandar , Aks and Lal Salaam .

Bollywood sex symbol Mallika Sherawat will also attend the Cannes festival with Jackie Chan to promote their film The Myth.