Deepika Padukone

                                                        Deepika Padukone

Deepika Padukone, born 5 January 1986 in Mangalore, Karnataka, is an Indian model & Actress. She is the daughter of former badminton Champion Prakash Padukone. Her mother tongue is Tulu. Deepika has a younger sister named Anisha. She has been modeling appearances in print and television advertising campaigns for Liril.

Padukone made her acting debut in the 2006 Kannada film Aishwarya. The following year, she made her Hindi film debut in Om Shanti Om, for which she earned the Film fare Best Female Debut Award. It also remains her biggest commercial success so far. She subsequently appeared in films such as Love Aaj Kal (2009) and Housefull (2010). While the former earned her a Film fare nomination in the Best Actress category, the latter emerged as a commercial success.

In addition to acting, Padukone is also the ambassador of prominent brands such as Tissot, Sony Cybershot, Nescafe and Kingfisher Airlines.

Padukone was then seen playing a feisty, modern-day Indian woman, Gayatri, in Siddharth Anand's romantic comedy Bachna Ae Haseeno alongside Ranbir Kapoor, Bipasha Basu and Minissha Lamba. The film, which released on 15 August 2008, performed reasonably well at the box office, but her performance drew flak. Adarsh wrote, Deepika is a sore point. Her role isn't convincing and that's the reason why this performance doesn't work. The only consolation is, she looks gorgeous.

Deepika Padukone at the premiere of Khelein Hum Jee Jaan Sey

She played a double role again in her next film, Chandni Chowk To China, which released on 16 January 2009. The film, directed by Nikhil Advani, also featured Akshay Kumar, Mithun Chakraborty and Ranvir Shorey in the lead. It was a critical and commercial disaster, with Nikhat Kazmi of The Times Of India commenting, Deepika looks lost and forlorn for most of the film.