young blue eyes

“The short version is that, yes, it’s an Indian name, and, no, I’m not Indian,” Radha Mitchell says with a laugh, refraining from further elaboration on the origins of her ethnic first name.

The star of last year’s “High Art” (in which she played Syd, the young photo editor who falls for Ally Sheedy’s glamorous has-been heroin addict), Mitchell is an earthy blond with a broad Australian accent, but the blue eyes set into her European face are exceptionally deep, round and heavily lashed, as if there might be a recessive Hindu gene in there somewhere. The best explanation for her name may be that she was born in the ‘70s, when it wasn’t all that strange to name your daughter Radha or Uma or Saffron.

Though Mitchell has never worn a sari and her favorite outfit would be a string bikini if she had more opportunity to wear one, she’s proof that a name can indeed take you places. The L.A.-based Mitchell, who is a vegetarian and yoga fanatic, has traveled extensively in India and is in the early stages of producing a pet movie project she describes as “a Bollywood musical with lots of black pop stars from England--very camp.”

This year she produced and starred in “Everything Put Together,” an independent film that will screen at Sundance, in which she plays a mother coping with the loss of a child.

And in February, Mitchell is opposite Vin Diesel and Cole Hauser in the sci-fi thriller “Pitch Black,” in the role of a renegade spaceship pilot. “Sci-fi’s not usually my genre,” she says. “But then, my favorite movie this year was ‘The Matrix.’ ” Elaborating on what turns her on in a movie script, or on the screen, Mitchell puts a backspin on the usual line, saying, “I’m more interested in ideas than I am in drama. As long as there’s something cerebral going on, I don’t necessarily care if there’s a good story.”

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Styled by Vincent Boucher/Artist Group Management: hair: Ken Paves/Profile, L.A.; Makeup: Victor Joseph for Valerie of Beverly Hills/Cloutier; location: Chateau Marmount, Hollywood; furnishings: Futurama, L.A.