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Bollywood Actress Shabana Azmi
Shabana Azmi was born on September 18th, 1950 to a well known and an affluent family. Her father, Kaifi Azmi was a celebrated Indian poet and Urdu writer while her mother, Shaukat Azmi was a renowned stage actress herself. Her parents being well known artist made her home a place where many people would visit. This thriving environment of artist being a form of life meant that Shabana was constantly appeased with the different forms of life’s colors. Shabana completed her Bachelor’s degree from the St. Xavier’s College in Psychology. Thereafter she enrolled into the Film and Television Institute of India for and course in Acting and passes with flying colors. She topped the batch of 1972. Her first release was the Shyam Benegal directed movie ‘Ankur’ that was released in 1972 but the first movie she signed as an actress was ‘Faalsa’ made by Khwaja Ahmad Abbas which was released in 1974. Both these films brought Shabana a lot of critical acclaim and recognition for her acting abilities. During the earlier part of her career she appeared in many art or parallel Hindi cinema movies. Actually during the seventies there were quite a few new directors trying to make their mark in Bollywood but they weren’t given the opportunities to direct the big stars of Bollywood so with a new generation of up coming stars ready to experiment the director too were happy. Shabana acted in any movies featuring other budding actors like Naseeruddin Shah, Om Puri & Smita Patil. One of her major commercial Bollywood successes came in the form of the 1983 movie ‘Masoom’ directed by Shekhar Kapoor and starring Nasseruddin Shah. Shabana Azmi is a actress who during her career has won many awards for her acting. Her acting is not of complete Bollywood genre, rather its mostly depicting real life issues and social issue and even issues that are a taboo. She has won the National Award for Best Actress of 5 different occasions, the 1st time being for the 1975 film – Ankur, then for 3 successive years (1983-1985) for Arth, Khandhar and Paar. And then again in 1999 she won the National Award for the film Godmother based on Indian politics. National awards apart she has also won numerous awards at many international film festivals. She acted in the film tilted ‘fire’ which was directed by Deepa Mehta. In the movie she plays the role of a lonely woman who gradually gets attracted to her sister-in-law. Her name in the movie is ‘Radha’. With Radha being the name of an Indian Goddess and the little showing of the lesbian relationship in the movie, the movie caught the ire of many social and Radha-Krishna groups across India. There was a call by Indian authorities to ban her. But in total contrast to India where the subject of lesbians is not approved off in the west the film got much appreciation. Shabana was awarded the Silver Hugo Award for her splendid acting at the 32nd Chicago Film Festival. She was also awarded the Jury Award for Best Actress Award at Outfest, Los Angeles. Shabana is not just an actress of international repute but is a very well known social activist; she has been a politician, a stage actor and a foreign goodwill ambassador of the Untied Nations Population Fund. She takes up issue that she thinks needs high attention and then uses her fame and popularity to bring the attention of the entire world to their needs. At first people would think that she was another celebrity doing it all for more publicity and media coverage but she has proved them all wrong. She has been awarded the prestigious Gandhi International Peace Prize awarded by the Gandhi Foundation, London.
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