Choudhury starred opposite Denzel Washington in the 1990 film Mississippi Masala, for which she received her Screen Actors Guild (SAG) card.[9] She was still working as a waitress in Manhattan's East Village to make ends meet while the film was in theatres.[9] After her debut film Mississippi Masala became an art house hit, Sarita Choudhury acted as a Pakistani country-western singer in Wild West (1992), a Chilean maid who is raped in Bille August's adaptation of The House of the Spirits, and a lesbian mother in Fresh Kill.