She is often called Bollywood's comedy queen, but not many people were laughing after listening to Rimi Sen's racist comment during an interview about her role in Golmaal. Talking to Nitin Shethi of Glamsham, Sen said:

"I play a sweet and beautiful girl in the film. The best thing that I like about the film is that though it has four heroes, I am the only heroine. Rohit Shetty is amazing as a director. He can make even a black African look pretty."

Golmaal, a mind numbingly stupid yet humorous Bollywood crime-comedy, reached number 8 in the UK charts.

The British African group Ligali condemned her statement and said the fact that the majority of readers saw Sen's comments as acceptable exposed "how normalised anti-African ideology is within Bollywood and its audiences".

Commenting on Rimi Sen's statement, Jaspreet Pandohar, a Bollywood film critic for BBC Movies Online said that the comments were "shameful but not entirely surprising".

She added: "The sad thing is Rimi probably doesn't even realise her comments can be construed as offensive. It would be practically unheard of a British actor making these kinds of racist comments in the open and to the media."

There have been other examples of racism raising its head in Bollywood.

Ms Pandohar says journalists were caught surprised at a recent London press conference for the Bollywood blockbuster Krrish. At the event, superstar Hrithik Roshan made a passing comment about how he knew it was time to leave Shanghai and Hong Kong after six weeks of stunt training and go home when his eyes started "turning into little slits like the Chinese".