Shabana Azmi

Shabana Azmi Biography

Shabana Azmi – the wife of noted poet, lyricist and scrip writer Javed Aktar and daughter of great Urdu poet and lyricist Kaifi Azmi is a blessed actress of Bollywood too. She is famous for the contemporary roles she has played in Indian screen and holds the unique record of hat-trick in National awards best actress category. She has won National award 5 times in this category – perhaps an unbreakable record. She won the awards for her unparallel performance in the movies Ankur (1975), Arth (1983), Khandar (1984), Paar (1985) and God Mother (1999). She has won film fare three times – Swami (1978), Arth (1983) and Bhavana (1984). A magical record indeed! She is the most sought name of parallel cinema in Indian screen. In 2006, she was appreciated by giving life time achievement award.

She was born in an art family and also married to an art family filled with talents. Tabu who has won National awards twice is her niece. Farah is the elder sister of Tabu. Shabana’s first Hindi movie was Shyam Benegal’s Ankur for which she won the best actress National award. It was a critically well acclaimed movie too. She has done realistic roles in the movies she have played. Her strong contender was Smitha patel, with whom she was often compared with. Both these actresses compete for the primary position in the parallel movies and media often wrote it as Smitha-Shabana rivalry. In 1982 movie Arth, Shabana Azmi and Smitha patel worked together.

She worked in controversial movie Fire of Deepa Mehta opposite Nandita Das which brought protests from Indian audience. In additional to off-beat movies, she has worked in a few commercial movies like Fakira opposite Shashi Kapoor, Devta opposite Sanjeev Kumar and Amar Akbar Antony opposite Vinod Khanna. Her most noticed films are Masoom, Arth, Ankur, Sparsh, Arth, Mandi, Swami, Sparsh, God Mother, Fire, Shatranj ki khiladi, Junoon and many more.  

She is a social activist too, who is busy with several awareness programs including AIDS and child support. In addition to Indian awards, she has won many foreign awards too for her acting. She has been conferred with an Honorary Doctorate by many universities, Indian and abroad.

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Updated: May 21, 2018