LOS ANGELES -- Deepti Daryanani thought long and hard about leaving her home in Kolkata, formerly called Calcutta. But she finally decided to leave India and move to the United States to work on her acting career.

She packed her bags, enjoyed a small going away party with her family and got a few words of advice from her parents.

In a turn of events that sounds like the plot of a movie, Daryanani was on her way back to India only a month after arriving in Los Angeles. She had landed a role in the new Disney Channel movie "The Cheetah Girls: One World."

The Cheetah Girls travel to India to be in a Bollywood movie. Daryanani plays the young choreographer who must deal with some of the jealousies that develop among the Cheetahs.

Executive producer Debra Martin Chase recalls that she knew Daryanani was the right person for the role the minute she walked into the room to audition.

"I remember they were asking me 'How long have you been here?' So I said, '20 days. She's like, 'Oh, 20 days, OK.' It was like that," Daryanani says during an interview in late July at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. "It's like a roller coaster ride for me.

"Going back home to shoot a movie and back to Rajasthan. It's so exotic. It's so beautiful, especially the locations. I personally love Rajasthan, so it was like a birthday gift from God. It's like OK, come back to India, do a movie, come back and study," Daryanani says.

The young actress got her start in India making commercials. She followed that up with roles in the films "MAD -- Music, Art and Dance," "Yeh Kya Ho Raha Hai" plus the stage productions of "Suhane Sapne," "Mukti" and "Shobhayatra."

Despite the steady work, Daryanani wanted to move to the United States to focus on acting studies. One of her goals is to learn how to "do an American accent" because it will look good on her résumé. But she has been so busy working that some of the studies have had to wait.

She grew up watching both American and Indian movies. Her impression of the United States was that everyone spoke very fast and the roads were very clean. That image must have impressed her conservative parents because they were supportive when Daryanani told them she had decided to move to the United States.

"They were a little concerned. The night I was leaving, they got me a nice little cake," Daryanani says. "After I cut the cake they made me sit. They were sitting next to me. My mother said to me 'Just one thing. Don't have water and biscuits from a stranger. I have heard the crime rate is very high in America.

"I told her that it was going to be OK."

Little did they know their daughter would only be in the United States a month before she made a return trip home. After the cable movie was done, they had to say farewell again as Daryanani returned to the United States. She's back chasing jobs and working on her American accent.