Rani Mukerji

Rani Mukerji

She was born 21 March 1978 and sheis an Indian actress. Through her successful Hindi film acting career, she has become one of the most high-profile celebrities in India, winning several awards, including seven Filmfare Awards. Her film roles have been cited as a significant departure from the traditional portrayal of women in Bollywood.

 Rani Mukerji

Early life and background


Rani Mukerji was born in Mumbai on 21 March 1978.Her father, Ram Mukherjee (born to the Mukherjee-Samarth family), is a former film director and one of the founders of Filmalaya Studios. Her mother, Krishna Mukherjee, is a former playback singer. Her elder brother, Raja Mukherjee, is a film producer and director. Her maternal aunt, Debashree Roy, is a Bengali film actress and her paternal cousin, Kajol, is a Hindi film actress and her contemporary. Another paternal cousin, Ayan Mukerji, is a scriptwriter and film director.Despite her parents and most of her relatives being members of the Indian film industry, Mukerji was disinterested in pursuing a career in film.She said, "here were already too many actresses at home and I wanted to be someone different".
Mukerji received her education at Maneckji Cooper High School in Juhu and graduated with a degree in Home Science from SNDT Women's University.She is a trained Odissi dancer and began learning the dance form while in the tenth grade.As part of an annual tradition, the Mukherjee family celebrates the festival of Durga Puja in the suburban neighbourhood of Santacruz every year. Mukerji, a practising Hindu, takes part in the festivities with her entire family.

At the age of fourteen, Mukerji experimented with acting by portraying a supporting role in her father's Bengali language film Biyer Phool (1992). The film starred Prosenjit and Indrani Haldar in lead roles and narrates the story of two sisters; Mukerji played the younger sibling of Haldar's character. In 1994, director Salim Khan approached her to play the lead female role in his directorial, Aa Gale Lag Jaa. Her father disapproved of a full-time career in film at such a young age, so she rejected the offer. When Khan approached her with another film offer to play the protagonist of the social drama Raja Ki Aayegi Baraat, Mukerji accepted the role due to her mother's insistence that she pursue acting on anexperimental basis.Before she began work on the film, Mukerji trained at Roshan Taneja's acting institute.

 Rani Mukerji

Career

Mukerji portrayed a rape victim who is forced to marry her rapist in the 1997 film Raja Ki Aayegi Baraat. Although a commercial failure,Mukerji's performance was praised, and she won a special recognition trophy at the annual Screen Awards ceremony.Following the film's failure, Mukerji returned to college to complete her education. However, inspired by her cousin Kajol's success in Bollywood, she decided to pursue a full-time career in film.
In 1998, Mukerji starred opposite Aamir Khan in Vikram Bhatt's Ghulam (1998), a moderate commercial success.Though her role in the film was small, the song "Aati Kya Khandala" earned her widespread recognition. Due to Mukerji's broken voice texture, Bhatt hired a dubbing artist with a much higher pitched voice to dub for her lines. When asked if the director's decision to not use her voice in the film affected her, she said that her voice was dubbed as it "did not suit the character".

Later that year, Karan Johar cast Mukerji opposite Shahrukh Khan and her cousin, Kajol, in his big-budget directorial debut Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. The role was originally written for Twinkle Khanna, but when she rejected the role, Johar approached several leading actresses, all of whom refused the offer. He subsequently cast Mukerji after she volunteered to play the role.Johar had originally intended that a dubbing artist dub Mukerji's lines in the film, but she improved her diction and eventually dubbed for her own lines.She portrayed Tina Malhotra, a college student who is in a relationship with Khan's character. Writing for India Today, film critic Nandita Chowdhury considered Mukerji to be the scene-stealer and added, "Oozing oomph from every pore, sh proves herself an actress whose time has come."Kuch Kuch Hota Hai proved a breakthrough for Mukerji; it emerged as a blockbuster in India and abroad with earnings of over INR1.03 billion (US$17 million), and won eight Filmfare Awards, including a Best Supporting Actress trophy for Mukerji.




Personal life

Despite constant media attention, Mukerji remains guarded about her personal life. Unlike many other celebrities, Mukerji limits her interactions with the media and is sometimes labelled a recluse; she said in a 2011 interview, "Today actors have become more open with the media. But this has posed a problem for actors like me because if I don't do that, then I end up being called reclusive. So now I have changed myself and am easily approachable." Mukerji has collaborated frequently and maintained a close friendship with actors Shahrukh Khan and Aamir Khan, and filmmaker Karan Johar. The nature of Mukerji's relationship with filmmaker Aditya Chopra was the topic of fervent tabloid reporting in India, though she refused to publicly talk about it. On 21 April 2014, she married Chopra at a private ceremony in Italy.

Mukerji has participated in several concert tours and televised award ceremonies. Her first concert tour, "Magnificent Five", was in 1999 in which she performed with actors Aamir Khan, Aishwarya Rai, Akshaye Khanna, and Twinkle Khanna. The "Temptations 2004" concert had Mukerji perform alongside Shahrukh Khan, Saif Ali Khan, Preity Zinta, Arjun Rampal, and Priyanka Chopra in nineteen stage shows worldwide. The following year, she participated in the "Temptations 2005" concert in New Delhi (with Shahrukh, Fardeen Khan, Ameesha Patel, and Malaika Arora Khan); the show was organised to help raise funds for the National Centre For Promotion of Employment for Disabled People. In 2010, Mukerji performed at a concert in the Army Stadium of Dhaka, Bangladesh with several Bollywood actors (including Shahrukh, Rampal, and Ishaa Koppikar).For the "Temptations Reloaded" concert of 2012 in Jakarta, Mukerji performed alongside Shahrukh, Zinta, and Bipasha Basu, for the 2013 concert of the same name in Auckland, she performed with Shahrukh, Madhuri Dixit, and Jacqueline Fernandez, and in 2014 she performed in Malaysia with Shahrukh, Dixit, Yo Yo Honey Singh, and Arijit Singh.