Nair's highly acclaimed first feature, "Salaam Bombay!" (1988), was a riveting and uncompromising tale of urban street life in the tradition of Bunuel's "Los Olvidados" and Hector Babenco's "Pixote". "Salaam Bombay!" featured fine performances from non-professional child actors and won both the Camera d'Or (for best first feature) and the Prix du Publique (for most popular entry) at Cannes. She followed up with "Mississippi Masala" (1992), a winning interracial romance set in the American South and starring Denzel Washington and Sarita Choudhury. (Nair divorced from her first husband, Mitch Epstein, who was co-producer and production designer of both features).

For her next Hollywood outing, Nair eschewed the trappings of her ethnic background, instead focusing on a Cuban clan and their struggles in America in her accessible adaptation of Christine Bell's novel "The Perez Family" (1995) starring Anjelica Huston, Marissa Tomei and Alfred Molina. The director then returned to India, circa the 16th Century, for the sensual feature "Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love" (1996), in which two young women--one a pampered princess, one a lowly servant--engage in a struggle for a man using the tried and true techniques of the fabled sexual tome. Less successful was "My Own Country" (1998), Nair's telepic adapation of East Indian physician Abraham Verghese's autobigraphical tale of his experiences attempting to find a treatment for AIDS in 1980s Tennessee.

The director struck creative gold with her much-admired indie "Monsoon Wedding" (2001), which with an Altman-sized cast of characters and a colorful, quirky wit depicted an Indian family's preparations for a modern-day arranged marriage. Nair also collected critical kudos for the HBO telepic "Hysterical Blindess" (2002), a bittersweet look at the relationships of a working class Jersey woman (Uma Thurman) with her best friend (Juliette Lewis), mother (Gena Rowlands) and the less-than-inspiring father of her child (Justin Chambers). After lensing the "India" segment of the multi-segment drama "11'09''01 - September 11" (2002), chronicling the aftermaths of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks from various international perspectives, Nair took the helm of a stylish adapatation of William Makepeace Thackeray's classic late 19th Century novel "Vanity Fair" (2004), starring Reese Witherspoon as the more sympathetic than usual social climber Becky Sharp.