Nandita Das

Nandita Das Biography

Nandita Das is a talented actress and director of modern cinema, yet dipped in a lot of controversies. She has worked in 10 languages including English, Hindi, Tamil, Oriya, Telugu, Marathi and Malayalam and has won many international awards for best actress for her movies – Aamar Bhuvan and Bawander. As director, she has done only one movie ‘Firaq’ which won many awards for best movie and screenplay including Asian festival of first films, International film festival of Kerala and International Thessaloniki Film Festival.

She debut silver screen through Parinati, an Oriya movie in 1989. But it was Deepa Mehta’s controversial movie ‘Fire’ that brought her to limelight. The theme of the movie was not appealing to Indian families and culture and many rose with protests against this movie. She did the role of ‘Sita’ opposite Shabana Azmi and Javed Jafrey. Then she showed her talent in critically well acclaimed movies like Bawander, 1947 Earth, Aamar Bhuvan, Kannaki, Naalu pennungal, Hazaar Chaurasi ki maa, Rockford, Punaradivasam, Aks, Pitah, Ek din 23 Ghante, Viswa Thulasi, Kannathil muthamittal, Azhaki, Bas yun hi, Provoked, I am and Kamli.

She has won awards in multi-languages for her performance as an actress and won many international awards for her directorial debut movie too. In 2000, she won Filmfare for debut actress (1947 Earth). For Bawander (2000) she won the best actress award at Santa Monica Film Festival. Her performance in Aamar Bhuvan gave her two awards – Zee cine awards as well as best actress awards at Cairo film festival. She won Nandi actress award in Telugu for the movie Kamli in the year 2006.  She has been awarded by French Government for her contributions to world cinema.  She has been designated with ‘Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres’. Nandita is the first Indian to be included in “Inrenational women’s forum”.

In most of her movies, she has been presented as a powerful lady with independent roles. Either it’s Kannaki or Kannathil Muthamittal, her character has her own thoughts as well as action. It makes Nandita so special, despite being a dark girl who is not seduced by glamour world and false make ups. She has never tried to give artificial make ups for her roles and thus appeared as an Indian lady in all her roles. About her personal life – She married twice. Her first husband was Soumya sen, whom she divorced in 2009. In 2010, she married Subodh Maskara and Vihaan is her only son.

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Updated: May 29, 2018