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Bollywood Actress Isha Koppikar
Isha Koppikar was born in Mumbai, India on 19th September 1976. She is a native of Mangalore in Karnataka. Isha has done her graduation in the Life Sciences stream from Ramnarain Ruia College in Mumbai. It was while she was studying here that she had the opportunity to appear for a photoshoot being done by photographer Gautam Rajadhyaksha. Well it proved to be a stepping stone for her career wise. One thing led to another things and she kept going places. She started to appear as a model for leading brands and also appear in TV commercials for brands Rexona, Camay, L’Oreal, Coke and many others. Then she took part in the Miss India beauty pageant in 1995 and won the Miss Talent crown. Beauty pageants in India have inevitably led to acting careers in Bollywood or in other regional languages. And that’s exactly what happened to Isha. She got her first offer to act in a Tamil movie and thus started her film career. Her first movie (Tamil) was titled ‘Kaadhal Kavithai’ and released in the year 1998. Thereafter Isha has acted in many Hindi, Tamil, Kannada and Telugu films during her career. Though most of them have been either acting in a support role in Hindi film and lead roles in south Indian movie she hasn’t tasted much as yet in her career. She does keep coming in the news quite often for her saucy roles and item numbers with films film ‘Company’ where she did the very famous ‘Khallas’ that went on to become a national rage. She also starred in the controversial Bollywood movie ‘Girlfriend’ that was directed by Karan Razdan and starred Amrita Arora as her love interest and Aashish Chaudhary as Amrita’s lover. This movie upon release caused havoc with there being large protest calling for a ban on the movie’s screening and the posters of the movie were burnt endlessly. But Isha has always been undeterred by such events and infact when you see her it feels as if she like the limelight even it has to come in this way. Some of the notable south Indian films that Isha has acted in are ‘En Swasa Kaatre’ that was released in 1998 and her co-star was Arvind Swamy (Arvind is the same actor who starred in Bollywood released like ‘Roja’ and ‘Bombay’ both were smash hits upon release). In 1999 Isha started acting in Telugu movies like ‘Chandralekha’ where her co-stars were Ramya Krishnan & superstar Nagarjuna. And she also starred in the Tamil gangland film ‘Nenjenile’ starring south actor Vijay and directed by S.A. Chandrasekar. She acted in few other movies as well but started concentrating on Bollywood more as offers for acting started pouring in more frequently and her role in the movies being well defined to the extent that she did not have to go the sets every morning and ask the director what was she supposed to do for the day. In 2001 she signed off from acting in Southern Indian movies completely so that she can stay in Mumbai where the Bollywood industry is based. Taking time out from four Kannada films in 2000, actress Koppikar appeared alongside Karisma Kapoor, Jaya Bachchan and Hrithik Roshan in Khalid Mohamed's Fiza. An item number appearance in Prakash Jha's Rahul completed Koppikar's introduction to Hindi film. Brief returns to South India in 2001 were coupled with two more Bollywood films: Pyaar Ishq aur Mohabbat, directed by Rajiv Rai and starring actor Sunil Shetty alongside a young actor Arjun Rampal; and K Raghavendra Rao's urban comedy Aamdani Atthanni Kharcha Rupaiya, opposite Govinda, Juhi Chawla and Johnny Lever. By 2002 Koppikar appeared to be consigned to support roles until she was asked by Ram Gopal Verma to appear in an item number for his underworld movie Company starring Ajay Devgan, Vivek Oberoi and actress Manisha Koirala. The number in question was Khallas, choreographed by Ganesh Hegde and the effect on cinema audiences and critics was to leave Koppikar with the enduring nickname Khallas Girl. A second notable item number, Ishq Samundar, in Sanjay Gupta's Reservoir Dogs remake Kaante, starring actors Amitabh Bachchan, Sanjay Dutt and Sunil Shetty, was enough to raise Koppikar's profile and in the following year she took the Stardust Award for Most Exciting New Face for Khallas. She also acted in hit movie of 2005 titled Maine pyaar kyoin kiya directed by David Dhawan. But that hasn’t had a telling effect on the direction of her career yet, she has mostly appeared in either low budget movies which do not have the script to succeed at the box office or then in small roles in big budget movie in which her character does not have any significance of centrifugal importance. Her only big budget hit movie till date has been the Farhan Akhtar’s remake of the 1978 Amitabh Bachchan starrer ‘Don’ which was titled – Don: The Chase Begin Again. She acted opposite to Sohail Khan in the 2007 movie Salaam-E-Ishq which was also a big failure. Isha continues to be a model and is the face for Italian fashion super brand Police Watches & Jewelry in India. She also is currently the model for designer Anita Dongre’s fashion line. Isha is also associated as a spokesperson with the international animal rights group PETA.
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