Deepika Padukone

Deepika Padukone was born on January 5, 1986, in Copenhagen Denmark to Prakash Padukone and international badminton player and Ujjala Padukone. Her father is a very famous former badminton player. She has a younger sister, Anisha, who is a professional golfer.

Her family shifted to India and settled in Bangalore, when Deepika was a year old. Deepika attended Sophia High School and later Mount Carmel College for pre-university education. She had enrolled at IGNOU for a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology but quit it in order to pursue the modelling career.

While she was growing up, she was completed focused on badminton at one point of time and played competitively from a young age. But later on she realised that badminton was not her real calling. In 2004, she went whole hog to pursue a modelling career under the tutelage of fashion stylist Prasad Bidapa.

Unlike models who struggle to get a break, Deepika Padukone’s journey was a smooth one. In 2005, she made her runway debut at Lakme Fashion Week. The following year, she was featured in the Kingfisher Calendar. She gained wider recognition when she was featured in the music video for Himesh Reshammiya's song ‘Naam Hai Tera’.

She soon began to receive film offers. However, not the one to jump into anything hastily, she instead enrolled for an acting course at Anupam Kher Film Academy to train herself for the job.

Deepika Padukone made her debut in 2006 with a Kannada film ‘Aishwarya’ opposite Upendra. Directed by Indrajit Lankesh, the film was a major commercial success. Meanwhile, she had also inked a deal with Farah Khan for the Hindi film ‘Happy New Year’.

After Farah Khan's ‘Happy New Year’ was shelved, she cast Deepika Padukone for the 2007 reincarnation melodrama ‘Om Shanti Om’. It marked her Bollywood debut. In it, she shared screen space with Shah Rukh Khan. The film was a great commercial success, and emerged as the highest-grossing film of the year. Deepika was lauded by the critics for her acting talent and her screen presence.

Following the big breakthrough, film offers came rolling in for Deepika. She was cast in ‘Bachna Ae Haseeno’, ‘Chandni Chowk to China’ and ‘Love Aaj Kal’. While the first two performed averagely at the box office, ‘Love Aaj Kal’ was a runaway success and became the third highest-grossing film of 2009. Deepika was complomented for delivering her finest performance as Meera Pandit.

While Deepika Padukone’s debut film ‘Om Shanti Om’ proved to be the breakthrough project of her career, it was not until 2013 that she established her stand as the leading lady of contemporary Indian cinema. The year was marked with four biggest hits of Padukone’s career graph, starting off with ‘Race 2’, ‘Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani’, ‘Chennai Express’ and finally ‘Goliyon ki Rasleela RamLeela’. The films earned her immense critical and commercial adulation as she became known as the top rated artist of the industry.

Taking the success story of 2013 forward, Padukone showed her brilliance as an actor with the 2015 films ‘Piku’ and ‘Bajirao Mastani’. While the former gave her an opportunity to come out from the glam avatar and pose as a strong feminist, the latter allowed her to explore her skills in a historic period drama. Both the films did exceptionally well and showcased Deepika’s versatility as an actor.