Nirupa Roy

Nirupa Roy Biography

Nirupa Roy was one of the ‘legendary mothers ‘of Hindi cinema. The most popular dialogue of Indian cinema, “Mere paas meri maa hai” – told by Shashi Kapoor belongs to the movie Deewar, where Nirupa Roy played the character of mother of both Amitabh Bachchan and Shashi Kapoor. She was often referred to as the "queen of misery" in Hindi film circles. In the career spanning for more than 50 decades, she acted in about 500 films, of which her ‘mother’ roles are most popular. She was one of the great ladies of Indian screen most versatile for handling mother roles and often addressed as ‘The greatest mother of Bollywood’. Her most popular film in the leading role is all time classic – Do bheega Zameen.

Nirupa’s real name is Kokila Kishorechandra Bulsara. She was born in Valsad of Gujarat in the year 1931. She got married to Kamal Roy at a younger age of 15 and moved to Mumbai. She started her career in films in the year 1946 at the age of 16. It was when she responded to an ad quoted in Gujarati newspaper and she got her first role in films. Ranakdevi was her debut movie. Same year she debut Hindi with Amar Raj. She was featured in many mythological movies during the era of 1940’s and 1950’s. In many movies, she was featured as goddess and people began to respect her that way too. Yet ‘Do bheega zameen’ is regarded as the milestone movie of her career where she played lead role opposite Balraj Sahni. She has also worked with Trilok Kapoor, Bharat Bhushan and Ashok Kumar.

During 1960’s onwards she began to appear in character roles and from 70’s onwards she became the ‘popular mother’ actress of Bollywood. She has received best actress in a supporting role, three times in Bollywood. Those movies are Chhaya, Shehnai and Munimji. In 2003, she was awarded with Life time achievement award by Filmfare and in the following year, she died at Mumbai due to cardiac arrest.   

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Updated: December 27, 2017