A daughter disowned

Next week, aspiring actress Sofia Hayatt will star in a new Channel 4 reality show about six Asian hopefuls battling it out to become a Bollywood star. But her involvement comes at a huge personal cost. Raised in Kent by strict Muslim parents, she has been shunned by her family for choosing a TV career over motherhood and a professional career. Here, she tells

As millions watch me on television next week, trying to make it as an actress, I know I will be breaking my mother's heart all over again. It has been eight years since I fell out with her - and that was when we last spoke.

At the heart of our disagreement is a dilemma which faces thousands of young British Asian girls. I am everything my mother doesn't want me to be. I wear sexy, Western clothes, I live a glamorous life with my Italian boyfriend, I visit clubs and bars - all things which go against everything she believes in.

If I'm honest, a part of me still holds out a hope that if she does see me on the Channel 4 show, she will finally be able to forgive me for choosing to follow my dream of a film career.

But I doubt it. Both she and my father, like so many Asian parents, think actresses are little better than whores.

They expected me to become a lawyer or an accountant. They would have been proud if I had studied science and become a doctor. I'm 26, so they also assumed I'd be a dutiful wife and mother by now.

My problem was I didn't want any of those things. All I ever wanted to do was sing and dance, and I've come to realise that I can only be the real me - even if it is without the love and support of my family. If only they could understand what an unfair choice that is.

But they were brought up in a very different world. My Pakistani-born father and mother, Zak and Lubna, came over here in the early 1970s before I was born, and it was a big shock for them, a real come-down in lifestyle. They had been very wealthy in Pakistan and lived in a huge house with servants. Over there, my mother was a teacher and my father was the manager of a five-star hotel.

In the UK, they had to get whatever jobs they could, so my dad drove a taxi and my mother worked in a factory. It was modest work and they had to work really hard to be able to afford my childhood home - a semi-detached, three-bedroom house in Rochester, Kent.

They often told my siblings and I - I have two brothers and three sisters - that they had made all these sacrifices for us. They had left the border city of Abbottabad because the threat of war was constant there and they didn't want us to grow up in a battle zone. We were made to feel they had done that for us.

We were brought up to be good Muslims, regularly attending the Mosque. At home, we wore traditional dress and read the Koran.

I was always the most outgoing of my brothers and sisters. I remember as a child my father would laugh when I showed off, singing and dancing. I even wrote my own songs - sometimes the songs were in Urdu, sometimes in English.

Of course, it was all very innocent, but from around the age of ten my parents started to discourage me from singing. I didn't understand it at the time, but many of the songs were all about falling in love, and this worried them like crazy.

I remember one day in class miming to a Michael Jackson song, Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough, and trying to mimic his moves. Someone at school, who was also Pakistani, told my mum and I was told I must never repeat it or I would be seen as a 'dirty Muslim'. I felt terrible that I'd apparently brought shame on my family. What I was doing was normal for any British girl, but I was made to feel wretched.

My parents became even more strict when I moved on to an all-girls state school at the age of 11. Looking back, this is when the rift really began between us. Though my parents didn't mind me mixing with English girls, I was never allowed to see them after school in case they were a bad influence.

I used to cry myself to sleep because it was so unfair. I wasn't even allowed posters on my wall, let alone go to school discos.

We were all into the groups New Kids on the Block and Five Star at the time, and I remember I once put a poster of Five Star up in my bedroom. But my father ripped it down and told me the poster meant I was worshipping them - and that God was the only thing I should idolise.

Incidents like that meant I quickly realised that anything else I enjoyed - like Smash Hits magazine - had to be carefully hidden away.

My one escape was drama, and I was often in school plays. Acting meant I could pretend to be someone else, and I was good at it.

It hurt that my parents never once came and watched me. I used to scan the audience for them but they were never there. I think they felt that if they attended, it would symbolise them giving me their blessing - which they certainly weren't.

Sometimes, I tried to confide in my sisters, but they never understood why I was so unhappy. They didn't seem to mind that my parents had already mapped out their lives for them. But I always felt different. As far as I was concerned, I was British. And I felt it was my right to have the same choices that women in Britain have.

Please understand, I loved my family - and I believed in God - but I also wanted to pursue my own life: to make my own mistakes, to become an actress, and to go out with men.

All around me, my girlfriends were making choices - which clothes to wear, what boyfriends to date and what career they wanted to follow. I wanted to be like them.

It had always been made clear to my sisters and me that when the time was right our parents would decide who we should marry. In fact, they started making plans for all of us before we were even out of nappies. Theirs had been an arranged marriage, so they expected the same for us.

Looking back, they have been happy enough. My father was the head of the household - and my mother just accepted that. Even so, for most of my early life I always knew that I didn't want that.

I was 13 when they introduced my first prospective husband to me. I hated him - he was 18 and my first cousin, for goodness sake. He was like my brother! He lived in Britain and was my aunt's son.

Within my faith, it is okay to marry cousins; however, I was horrified. But by turning him down, they acted as if I'd insulted my own family.

Three or four other men were put forward that I had no interest in. Some were related to me, others were the sons of my parents' friends.

There was one young man whom I liked. We met at one of the afternoon matchmaking parties organised by my parents. By then, I was 18 and Amir was 23 - a very handsome and charming banker in the City. But when I told him I liked him and suggested we meet for dinner by ourselves, he was outraged that I should want to see him without a chaperone.

I couldn't believe that someone who outwardly seemed so Western could have such an old-fashioned attitude. I knew then I could never marry him. Not that I could ever contemplate marrying someone after just one meeting. How can you make a decision about the rest of your life on that basis?

The truth is, I was far more interested in going to university and dating a few boyfriends before something so serious. Thankfully, I did well in my A-levels. I got two grade As and two Bs and won a place at Sussex University.

The only way my parents would allow me to go was if I was studying a science, because it was a respected subject, so I chose biology. But at least I was free when I got there.

For the first year I lived in the student halls, which was fantastic. I quickly made lots of friends. I also spent some of my student grant on buying the clothes I had always wanted to wear, some short skirts and some low-cut tops.

Looking back, my new look was really over the top, but I was trying to be as feminine as I could after so many years of dressing conservatively.

My parents never knew, of course. If they ever visited me, I would hide any remotely sexy clothes in friends' rooms.

But that was just the beginning of my double life as a student. At the start of my second year, without telling my parents, I changed my degree and enrolled on a music and performing arts course.

I couldn't tell them the truth, because I knew they would force me to leave, so I just pretended that I was still carrying on with my biology course.

Each weekend, they still expected me to come home. I used to have a completely different wardrobe for those trips, always wearing my traditional shalwar kameez. I kept very quiet, too. I couldn't tell them about my performing or the boys I had started to date, so I had nothing much to say.

It hurt a lot that my family had no idea who the real me was. But I knew I couldn't tell them or they would have forced me to leave university.

It was a steep learning curve, discovering real life on my own. I hadn't even kissed a man until I got to university, and looking back, I was hopelessly naive. I'd only ever met men before with my parents as chaperones, so I knew nothing about Western dating.

I remember once believing a man when he invited me in for coffee. I was 19 but I had no idea that coffee usually led to sex. When he tried it on and I turned him down, explaining I was a virgin, he was furious and called me a tease. It really upset me.

But slowly I learnt that a kiss didn't necessarily mean a marriage proposal - or even a date - and my confidence with men grew.

Of course, I hid all this from my parents. In the end, I managed to carry out the pretence that I was still studying biology for two years. They only finally worked out something was amiss when there was no graduation day in my third year.

When I eventuallly told my mum the truth, all hell broke lose. She immediately began shouting that I had to give it up and come home. When I refused, she told me I had to choose: my career or my family.

Even the thought of choosing tore me apart, but I knew I couldn't give up my passion for the stage. My mum said that in that case, in her eyes I was dead. Her words were: 'Now I no longer have three daughters; I have two.'

I felt like I had been stabbed in the heart - my own mother looking at me with such hatred in her eyes. My father tried to reconcile us at first, but when he realised I wasn't going to change my mind, he stood by as Mum banned me from the house. It broke my heart, especially when my brothers and sisters sided with my parents and told me they didn't agree with what I'd done. To them, I was their bad sister.

I suppose I could have given in at this point and done what they wanted. But I knew I had to try to live my dream - after all, you only get one life.

After my degree, I started auditioning and doing some part-time modelling. With no parental support, I had three jobs in order to pay the rent on a flat in Brighton. I worked in an office by day, in a club as a barmaid at night, and at weekends I dressed up in a costume to be Sammy the Sea Lion to promote the Brighton Sea Life Centre.

But it was worth it. Before long, a cameraman I'd met asked me to help him out on a show for Zee TV, the Asian channel. A couple of weeks later, someone on the channel saw my tape and offered me a job presenting a showbiz show called Sorted.

I have now been working for the channel for two years and I'm always dashing around London, interviewing big Bollywood stars, and going to premieres or nightclubs. Within the Asian community, I'm pretty well known.

I get sacks of mail every week - though only a fraction of it is fan mail. I would say a third of it is from young girls or teenagers asking me for advice. They are facing the same dilemmas I was.

Another pile is from parents accusing me of setting a bad example to their kids. I try to ignore the hatemail - even though it can be fairly vitriolic and frightening. I tell myself it stems from ignorance and fear. But I try to reply to anyone who asks for my help, as I know only too well what they are feeling.

So many British Asian girls struggle to fit in. They see from television or friends at school just how rich life can be, and they want to grasp every opportunity. And yet they are held back by their parents, who want them to conform to the traditions of the family. I find it shameful that so many are not free to show who they really are.

But many from our parents' generation don't understand that young British Asian women want to have the same choices as other women - and to be able to make their own way in life.

The sad truth is that if they decide to go for it and grab at life, they may, in the process, lose their family just as I have done.

I miss my mother like crazy, and I desperately want to be part of her life again. It hurts so much. Five years ago, I started to see a counsellor to help me cope with the rejection.

I would dearly love to be reconciled with my family, but I have come to the sad realisation that if I want a happy family life, then it is one I will have to make myself - with a husband and children of my own.

I am in a steady relationship with a great man, Pompeo. He's Italian and a Roman Catholic, so I know my family would never approve. But I love him and we're happy together.

I have cried so much over the years, and yet I still feel I have done the right thing. I just wish my family could love me for who I am, rather than for who they want me to be.

But above all I wish it could be different for all those young British Asian girls growing up, trapped as I was, between two cultures. It is time our parents addressed this issue and realised how unfair they are being.

Surely it is their role to support us, not shun us, for growing into strong, independent women who want only to make their own choices. Is that really too much to ask?