Karen David

Born in Shillong, India, at the foot of the Himalayas, and raised in Etobicoke, Ont., singer, actor and all-around charmer Karen David already has a showbiz resume as diverse as her family tree.

Starting young, at age 17 David won a scholarship to the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston to study jazz and gospel. She later moved to London to study at the Guildford School of Acting, joining the original cast of the hit musical Mamma Mia!

She then appeared in Batman Begins and Provoked: A True Story with Aishwarya Rai (Bride & Prejudice) and Naveen Andrews (TV’s Lost), and released two EPs of her own songs. These days, David is in video stores everywhere starring in The Scorpion King 2: Rise of a Warrior (released Aug. 19); her first full-length album, Me Versus Me, ships this fall and she’s appearing in new ad campaigns for Roots Canada and Vasanti Cosmetics.

Where does this drive come from? “I was an ambitious kid,” says David. “When I was four or five years old, I already wanted to be an actress and a singer, and my parents told me early that since I came from a very normal family with no (showbiz) connections I’d have to work very hard.” Of course, pursuing both music and acting can be a juggling act, David says, but “when I was training we were told that if you wanted to pay the bills, you had to be good at more than one thing to make sure you had a job.”

And David is good at more than one thing. Her songs — many co-written with legendary Bollywood composer A.R. Rahman or Rob Wells, a top Canadian writer/producer and high school pal (and her brother-in-law to boot) — marry a velvety voice with Indian strings and percussion for a sound she calls “exotic pop.”

“I have such a varied background — my mom is Chinese, but from a matriarchal society in the Himalayas, and my father is Indian, but with Jewish roots,” she says. “It’s all pretty complicated for a kid. I just wanted to be Canadian and fit in, so I used to shun all that. But as you get older you embrace it, so I wanted to find some way to go back to my roots, and fuse that in a mainstream, crossover way."

Speaking of crossing over, David has high hopes for Scorpion King, directed by veteran Russell Mulcahy (Highlander, Resident Evil: Extinction), and despite her delicate, trans-ethnic beauty, she relished running through fire, jumping from walls and sword fighting during the South African shoot. “When I was in drama college we did a lot of stage combat and I absolutely loved it,” she says.

Even with her work ethic, David still chooses her roles carefully so she doesn’t lose credibility as a musician. “It’s been a long road,” she says. “But I’ve trained in both music and drama, and tried to lay the foundations for both fields so when people look at my CV they see I’ve paid my dues.”•

Check out www.KarenDavid.com for song samples and concert dates.