Hindi film actress Rani Mukerji made her screen debut in Biyer Phool (1996), a Bengali film directed by her father Ram Mukherjee. [1] Her first leading role was that of a rape victim in the 1996 social drama Raja Ki Aayegi Baaraat . [2] In 1998 she received wider recognition for her role alongside Aamir Khan in the action film Ghulam , [3] and had her breakthrough as the romantic interest of Shah Rukh Khan's character in the romantic drama Kuch Kuch Hota Hai . The latter earned Mukerji her first Filmfare Award in the Best Supporting Actress category. [4] She followed this by playing the leading lady in several films, including Hello Brother (1999) and Nayak: The Real Hero (2001), none of which helped propel her career forward. [5] [6] [7]
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Mukerji's career prospects improved in 2002 when she starred in Yash Raj Films' Saathiya , a romantic drama that gained her a Filmfare Critics Award for Best Actress. [8] [9] For her roles in the 2004 romantic comedy Hum Tum and the composite drama Yuva , Mukerji became the only actress to win both the Filmfare Award for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress, respectively, in the same year. [10] [11] [12] Also that year, she starred in Veer-Zaara —the highest-grossing Bollywood film of the year. [13] In 2005, she received praise for portraying a blind, deaf and mute woman in the drama Black , [14] and played a con woman in the crime comedy film Bunty Aur Babli . [15] For her performance in Black, she was awarded the Best Actress and Best Actress (Critics) trophies at Filmfare. [9] The following year, she played an unhappily married woman in the drama Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna — the top-grossing Bollywood film in overseas at that point. [16]
Following a leading role in the financially successful drama Ta Ra Rum Pum (2007), [17] Mukerji starred primarily in films produced by Yash Raj Films for the next two years. [18] None of these films performed well at the box office, [19] after which she featured as a talent judge for the Sony Entertainment Television reality show Dance Premier League (2009). [20] The role of a headstrong television reporter in the 2011 thriller No One Killed Jessica earned her another Best Supporting Actress trophy at Filmfare, [21] and the film proved to be her first box office success in four years. [22] In 2012, she portrayed a grieving mother in the supernatural thriller Talaash: The Answer Lies Within and in 2014 she appeared as a police officer in the crime thriller Mardaani . [23] [24] [25] Following a four-year hiatus, Mukerji played a woman suffering from Tourette syndrome in Hichki (2018), which ranks among Hindi cinema's highest-grossing female-led films. [26] [27] She reprised her role in the sequel Mardaani 2 (2019), which was also a commercial success. [28] In 2023, she starred as the real-life character of a woman whose children were taken away by the Norwegian Child Welfare Services in the drama Mrs. Chatterjee vs Norway , which emerged as a sleeper hit and won her another Filmfare Critics Award for Best Actress. [29] [30]
