New Delhi: Her Hindi was not impeccable, yet it was too good for a Briton who has spent the larger part of her life in Hong Kong. It's Sue, the firang girl in Rang De Basanti, we are talking about.
In reel life, you have seen her beaming in admiration for the great foursome of freedom fighters - Azad, Ashwaq-ullah Khan, Bhagat Singh and Sukhdev.
In real life, too, Alice Patten shares a story of colonial past. She is the youngest daughter of Lord (Chris) Patten of Barnes, the 28th and last British Governor General of Hong Kong. 
And her tears on that historical night of June 1997, when Hong Kong was handed over to China, still remain the abiding image of Britain's retreat from its last post.
And today, as India goes gaga over Aamir Khan's Rang De Basanti, her face again gets etched in millions of hearts - in a new avatar though.
Rang de Basanti is Alice's first film. She has also played the role of Ophelia in Hamlet, a West End production.
"It's a very different kind of Indian film - not your typical Bollywood fare," The Times, London, quoted Alice as saying about Rang De Basanti.
"There are no big song-and-dance sequences, which is a shame, in a way. Because, I would have liked to have had that experience. But there is one party scene where there's music. I try and join in with the dancing and look fairly foolish," she told The Times.
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Alice is the latest in a beeline of British actors to Bollywood.
Last year, it was Antonia Bernath (23) in Subhash Ghai's Kisna: The Warrior Poet and Toby Stephens, the son of Dame Maggie Smith, who played a British army officer in The Rising. Even before that, Sophie Dahl and Saffron Burrows featured in Bollywood films.
The Hong Kong handover shot Alice to fame accidentally. On that famous night in June 1997, when the rain lashed Hong Kong harbour, bagpipes played and the Union Jack was lowered for the final time, she was so inconsolable that the Prince of Wales had to fix her a stiff gin and tonic.
The Prince's journal, parts of which were revealed in the High Court last month, recalls boarding the Royal Yacht Britannia 'to be met by a gaggle of waiting Patten daughters, all thoroughly overcome by emotion and exhaustion'.
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"It was a very personal moment that was seen by millions of people. Obviously the drama of the day added to it, but I was leaving my home and friends and I was only 17," Patten recalled in an interview with The Times.
She was the youngest of the 'Three Graces', as the mesmerised local press called the glamorous Patten sisters. Laura, whose mini-skirt almost upstaged her father’s inauguration, is a Pilates instructor and Kate is a television producer.
Alice's father, Lord Patten, is now the Chancellor of Oxford University.
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