Vidya Balan | The self made actress and Padma Shri Awardee

Vidya Balan is a very popular Indian actress who primarily appears in Bollywood movies. She was awarded the Padma Shri Award by the Government of India in 2014.

Early Life and Family

Vidya Balan was born on 1st January, 1979 into a Tamil Brahmin family. Her father’s name is P.R Balan who is the executive Vice President of Digi cable. Her mother, Saraswathi Balan is a homemaker. Vidya Balan grew up in the suburbs of Chembur, Mumbai. She went to St. Anthony’s Girls High School and had a passion for acting since a young age. It known that she inspired by the actors like Shabana Azmi and Madhuri Dixit. After school, she went to St. Xavier’s College where she pursued Sociology and later got her master’s degree from the University of Mumbai.
Vidya got the role of Radhika at the young age of 16 in Ekta Kapoor’s “Hum Paanch”. Vidya’s parents and family were always supportive of her acting passion. While she was doing her master’s she got the female lead role in the Malayalam movie called Chakram alongside Mohanlal. The movie unfortunately shelved and then she focused her attention to Tamil movies.

Challenges faced

It was in 2001 when she casted as a lead in N. Lingusamy’s “Run”. But again, she replaced by Meera Jasmine. Her next two Tamil movies, Bala and Manasellam were also replaced by Meera Jasmine and Trisha. But she did not lose hope. After a not so good start to the film industry, Vidya did about 60 TV commercials and music videos.

Her debut movie was with the Bengali Movie Bhalo Theko for which she won the Anandalok Puraskar for Best Actress. After this, she auditioned for the Hindi film Parineeta which is a movie based on Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s “Parineeta”. She won the Best Debut Female award at the Filmfare Awards and received a nomination for the Best actress.
She next seen opposite Sanjay Dutt in Lage Raho Munna Bhai which emerged as the one of the highest grossing movies in that year.

Way towards Success

Next big success of Vidya was the Horror film “Bhool Bhulaiyaa” also starring Akshay Kumar, Rajpal Yadav and many more. The movie made her take Kathak classes for the famous climax scene which she very intimidated by. Again it was also one of the top grossing movies in that year.
Next success came with “Paa” in 2009 where she then played a single mother struggling with her son’s progeria. It was for this film that she then also won the Filmfare and Screen Award for Best Actress. The Dirty Picture became the top earning female-led movie in Hindi cinema. Then she starred in the film Ishqiya in the year 2010. In the year 2011 she starred in the film No One Killed Jessica.

Balan’s next movie a crime thriller Kahaani, which entirely shot in Kolkata amidst the Durga Puja festivals. Again it emerged as the biggest earning female-led movies and got her the Best Actress Award again at Filmfare. She has also worked in superhit films like Hamari Adhuri Kahaani in 2015. Tumhari Sulu in 2017 and also earned a filmfare for her performance.

Her latest works includes Amazon Prime’s Shakuntala Devi in 2020. Sherni in 2021 and Prime video’s Jalsa in 2022. She is also currently filming 2 of her movies which are set to be released in the year 2022 itself or later.

Awards and Achievements

Vidya Balan has won 6 Filmfare awards, 1 National Film Award for Best Actress for Dirty Picture and Critics Awards for Best Actress for Ishqiya. In 2014, she awarded the Padma Shri Award by the Government of India for her contributions to Indian Cinema. She also received the Doctor of Arts degree from Rai University.