Vyjayanthimala

Vyjayanthimala Biography

Vyjayanthimala is a popular actress of Bollywood during late 50’s, 60’s and early 70’s. She is a trained classical dancer, singer and parliamentarian as well. She has been a celebrated actress during 60’s and is known most for her powerful performances in Madhumathi, Sangham, Suraj, Jewel thief, Raj kumar, Prince, Amrapali and Naya daur. She was most successful with Dileep Kumar, Raj kapoor, Sunil Dutt and Rajendra Kumar. She was paired most with Dileep Kumar – Naya Daur, Madhumathi, Devdas, Paigam, Ganga Jamuna, Sangursh and Leaderand all of them were commercially successful in Bollywood.

She was the first heroine from south who established herself as a successful actress in Bollywood. She was born in Madras Presidency and started her acting career in Tamil movies. But all her movies flopped at box office eventually leading to end of her career in south and she concentrated most on Hindi. Her last Tamil movie was a historical movie opposite Sivaji Ganesan in 1962 which was a disaster at box office. Before that, she had already started her success journey in Bollywood, from early 50’s through a string of hits. Nagin, Devdas, Naya Daur, Bahar, Asha, Madhumathi and Paigam were her hit movies during 1950’s.

Her commercially successful movies during 60’s were Jewel thief, Sungursh, Sangham, Leader, Ganga Jamuna and Suraj. She worked a lot for her dream work, Amrapali, based on the life of a courtesan. Her dancing talents were well exploited in this movie. But the movie flopped at box office, despite of good performance by the actors and magical tunes of Shankar Jaikishen. Vaijayanthimala was deeply hurt by its box office failure that she decided to stop working in films. She lost interest in movies and got married. She did only 4 movies after that and left industry forever. Surprisingly all those movies were successful too. It can be said that she left the industry earlier, without exploiting her full talents. Her pairing with Dilip Kumar has helped a lot in his career establishment too. She has been linked with Dilip Kumar and Raj kapoor, though the relations didn’t carry off smoothly.

She has been nominated 19 times for her performance and she won it 18 times. She got Filmfare best supporting actress award for Devdas. But she rejected it saying she deserves to get best actress award! She was nominated for Filmfare best actress award for Madhumathi, Ganga Jamuna, Sadhana and Sangham. She won all except Madhumathi. She has shown her talents as a classical dancer in many movies like Jewel thief, Naya daur and Amrapali. 

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Updated: June 13, 2018