Rani Mukerji

Rani Mukerji born on March 21, 1978, is an Indian film actress who works in Bollywood movies.

Making her acting debut with Raja Ki Aayegi Baraat (1996), Mukerji had her first commercial success with Karan Johar's romance Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998), her biggest hit so far, and won a Filmfare Best Supporting Actress Award for her performance in the film. She later starred in many films, most of which fared below expectations. She re-invented her image with Saathiya (2002), which was commercially and critically successful.

In 2004, her performances in the hit Hum Tum and the critically acclaimed Yuva earned her the Best Actress and the Best Supporting Actress awards at the Filmfare, making her the first actress to win two major awards in the same year. She received unanimous praise for her role as a deaf and blind girl in the film Black (2005), as well as many awards for her memorable performance, establishing herself as a leading actress in Bollywood.

Deepika Padukone

Padukone was born to Ujjala and Prakash Padukone on January 5, 1986, in Copenhagen, Denmark. Her family moved to Bangalore, India, when she was only eleven months old. Her parents hail from Padukone village in Kundapura Taluk of Udupi District, Karnataka, India. Her father, Prakash Padukone, was a badminton player of international repute, and her mother is a travel agent. Deepika has a younger sister, Anisha, born in 1991 and a younger brother named Adarsha, born in 1993.

Padukone attended Sophia High School in Bangalore. She completed her Pre-university studies at Mount Carmel College in Bangalore, India. While in high school she played badminton at the state level like her father and was a member of her father's badminton club. However, she wasn't keen on pursuing a career as a badminton player and abandoned it to concentrate on her ICSE exams.

Modeling

While in college, Padukone pursued a career in modeling. Over the years, she has modeled for such Indian brand names such as Liril, Dabur Lal powder, Close-Up toothpaste and Limca, and "brand ambassador" for the Jewels of India retail jewelery show. The cosmetics company Maybelline made her its international spokesperson.

At the fifth annual Kingfisher Fashion Awards she was awarded the title "Model of the Year".[citation needed] Shortly afterward, she was chosen as one of the models for the Kingfisher Swimsuit Calendar for 2006 and won two trophies at the Idea Zee Fashion Awards: "Female Model of the Year - (Commercial Assignments)" and "Fresh Face of the Year". Padukone was also chosen as the brand ambassador of Kingfisher Airlines and later Levi Strauss and Tissot SA.

Acting

After pursuing a successful career in modeling, Padukone branched out into acting. She started by starring in the music video for the song Naam Hai Tera from the independent pop album Aap Kaa Surroor by Himesh Reshammiya.

In 2006, Padukone made her cinematic debut in the Kannada film Aishwarya starring opposite actor Upendra. She later made a successful Bollywood debut in 2007 with Farah Khan's international hit Om Shanti Om opposite Shahrukh Khan. The film featured her portraying 1970s star Shantipriya and later as Sandhya, a young woman who looks exactly like Shantipriya. Her performance was well received, earning the actress a Filmfare Best Female Debut Award as well as her first Filmfare Best Actress nomination. Taran Adarsh from indiaFM noted, "Deepika has all it takes to be a top star — the personality, the looks and yes, she's supremely talented too. Standing in the same frame as SRK and getting it right is no small achievement. She comes as a whiff of fresh air!"

Padukone next appeared in Siddharth Anand's Bachna Ae Haseeno (2008) opposite Ranbir Kapoor and then the Warner Bros.-Bollywood collaboration, Chandni Chowk To China, which released on January 16, 2009. As of January 2009, she is working on Imtiaz Ali's Love Aaj Kal opposite Saif Ali Khan.

Shilpa Shetty

Shilpa Shetty is an Indian film actress and model. Since making her debut in the film Baazigar (1993), she has appeared in nearly 50 Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Kannada language films, her first leading role being in the 1994 Aag. Although she went through years of decline during her career, Shetty was willing to reinvent herself quite often. Her performances in Dhadkan (2000) and Rishtey (2002) were appreciated, while her portrayal of an AIDS patient in Phir Milenge (2004), won her many accolades. Her younger sister Shamita Shetty is also a Bollywood film actress.

Shetty has been embroiled in various controversies including suspected mafia links. In 2006 she was issued with a warrant on charges of obscenity. After taking part in the British Celebrity Big Brother TV show in 2007, Shetty was crowned the winner with 63% of the final vote, after an international racism controversy involving her and fellow contestants Jade Goody, Jo O'Meara and Danielle Lloyd. This was followed by her comeback to films in 2007 when she acted in two successive movies, Life in a... Metro and Apne, with her performance in the former drawing positive reviews. Shetty thus re-established her status in the film industry.

Angelina Jolie

Angelina Jolie (born Angelina Jolie Voight on June 4, 1975) is an American film actor and a Goodwill Ambassador for the UN Refugee Agency. She has been cited as one of the world's most beautiful women and her off-screen life is widely reported. Jolie has received three Golden Globe Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and an Academy Award.

Though she made her screen debut as a child alongside her father Jon Voight in the 1982 film Lookin' to Get Out, Jolie's acting career began in earnest a decade later with the low-budget production Cyborg 2 (1993). Her first leading role in a major film was in Hackers (1995). She starred in the critically acclaimed biographical films George Wallace (1997) and Gia (1998), and won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in the drama Girl, Interrupted (1999). Jolie achieved international fame as a result of her portrayal of video game heroine Lara Croft in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001), and since then has established herself as one of the best-known and highest-paid actresses in Hollywood. She has had her biggest commercial successes with the action-comedy Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005) and the animated film Kung Fu Panda (2008).

Divorced from actors Jonny Lee Miller and Billy Bob Thornton, Jolie currently lives with actor Brad Pitt, in a relationship that has attracted worldwide media attention. Jolie and Pitt have three adopted children, Maddox, Pax, and Zahara, as well as three biological children, Shiloh, Knox, and Vivienne. Jolie has promoted humanitarian causes throughout the world, and is noted for her work with refugees through UNHCR.

Britney Jean Spears

Britney Jean Spears (born December 2, 1981) is a Grammy Award-winning American pop singer and entertainer.

Raised in Kentwood, Louisiana, Spears first appeared on national television in 1992 as a contestant on the Star Search program, and went on to star in Disney Channel's television series The New Mickey Mouse Club from 1993 to 1994. In 1997, Spears signed a recording contract with Jive, releasing her debut album ...Baby One More Time in 1999. The album established her as a pop icon and "bona fide pop phenomenon", credited for influencing the revival of teen pop in the late 1990s. Spears released her sixth studio album Circus on her 27th birthday in December 2008.

Spears is ranked as the eighth best-selling female recording artist in the United States with 32 million sold albums certified by the Recording Industry Association of America and one of the world's best-selling music artists having sold an estimated 85 million records worldwide. Spears also holds the title to multiple Guinness World Records.

Bipasha Basu

Bipasha Basu is an Indian film actress who appears in Bollywood films and former model. She was the winner of the Ford's Godrej Cinthol Supermodel contest for 1996 and is currently one of the mainstream actresses in Bollywood. She is often cited by popular magazines and newspapers as one of Asia's sexiest celebrity women.

Basu was born in New Delhi, India, to a Bengali family. She is the second of three daughters to her parents, the elder being Bidisha, and the younger—Vijayeta. Although she was born in New Delhi, her family later moved to Kolkata.

According to her, she had come into modeling and acting quite by accident, because initially she had planned to study medicine. Basu studied science till the 12th standard at Bhavan's Gangabux Kanoria Vidyamandir and later took up commerce at The Bhawanipur Gujarati Education Society College, an undergraduate college affiliated with the University of Calcutta. In Kolkata, she did modelling and rampshows partime. Although, as pointed above, she intended to become a doctor, her aversion for dissections made her opt for chartered accountancy. However, in 1996, she met well-known model Mehr Jessia in Kolkata; the latter suggested that Basu take part in the Godrej Cinthol Supermodel contest. She eventually participated, and won the contest.

Career

After winning the Ford Godrej Cinthol contest, Basu was flown to New York by the Ford Company, where she had a successful modelling career at the age of 17.

Basu made her film debut in Abbas Mustan's Ajnabee, with Akshay Kumar, Bobby Deol and Kareena Kapoor. She played a married woman who goes all out to woo her husband’s married friend, and eventually won the Filmfare Best Female Debut Award for her performance.

In 2002, Basu starred in Vikram Bhatt's thriller Raaz. The film was a big commercial success and surfaced as the biggest hit of that year. For her performance in the film, she received her first Best Actress nomination at the Filmfare. One review in The Tribune noted, "...it is Bipasha Basu who steals the show with her fine performance." She appeared as Sonia Chauhan in the 2003 hit movie Jism alongside current boyfriend John Abraham. The movie earned her a Filmfare Best Villain Award nomination.

Besides acting, Bips, as she is fondly called, did the famous video "Tu" for Sonu Nigam's album, Kismat back in her early days before she became an actress. She also made a guest appearance in Jay Sean's music video Stolen.

In 2006, she won popular acclaim for her performance in an Item number during the song Beedi in the film Omkara. The song was a national hit, and Basu's pictuarisation was appreciated.

In 2008 Basu starred in Race, her second collaboration with duo Abbas Mustan, with whom she debuted in Bollywood. Co-starring Saif Ali Khan, Akshaye Khanna, Anil Kapoor and Katrina Kaif, the film performed well at the box office, and Basu's performance was appreciated by critics. Taran Adarsh of indiaFM described her performance as "her best work so far. She’s superb". She also received good reviews for her role in Bachna Ae Haseeno opposite Ranbir Kapoor. She completed the year by appearing in Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi in the song Phir Milenge Chalte Chalte.

In 2009 Bipasha signed her first Hollywood venture Chaimera alongside Billy Zane.

Preity Zinta

Preity Zinta is an Indian film actress. She has appeared in Hindi films of Bollywood, as well as Telugu, Punjabi and English language films. After graduating with a degree in criminal psychology, Zinta made her acting debut in Dil Se in 1998 followed by a role in Soldier the same year. These performances earned her a Filmfare Best Female Debut Award, and she was later recognised for her role as a teenage single mother in Kya Kehna (2000). She subsequently played a variety of character types, and in doing so has been credited with changing the image of a Hindi film heroine.

Zinta received her first Filmfare Best Actress Award in 2003 for her performance in the drama Kal Ho Naa Ho. She went on to play the lead female role in two consecutive annual top-grossing films in India: the science fiction film Koi... Mil Gaya, her biggest commercial success, and the star-crossed romance Veer-Zaara, which earned her critical acclaim. She was later noted for her portrayal of independent, modern Indian women in Salaam Namaste and Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna, top-grossing productions in overseas markets. These accomplishments have established her as a leading actress of Hindi cinema. Her first international film role was in the Canadian film Heaven on Earth, for which she was awarded the Best Actress (Silver Hugo) award at the 2008 Chicago International Film Festival.

In addition to movie acting, Zinta has written a series of columns for BBC News Online South Asia, is a regular stage performer, and along with boyfriend Ness Wadia she is a co-owner of the Indian Premier League cricket team Kings XI Punjab. She is known in the Indian media for publicly speaking her mind and openly expressing her opinions, occasionally sparking controversy.[8][9] These controversies include her being the only witness not to retract in court her earlier statements against the Indian mafia during the 2003 Bharat Shah case, for which she was awarded the Godfrey Phillips National Bravery Award.