KANGANA RANAUT

                               KANGANA RANAUT 

         Kangana Ranaut is an Indian film actress. She has established a career in Bollywood and is one of the highest-paid actresses in India. Ranaut is particularly known in the media for expressing her honest opinions in public and is frequently credited as one of the most fashionable Indian celebrities. She is the recipient of several awards, including three National Film Awards and Filmfare Awards in four categories.

       Born in Bhambla, a small town in Himachal Pradesh, Ranaut initially aspired to become a doctor at the insistence of her parents. Determined to build her own career path, she relocated to Delhi at age sixteen, where she briefly became a model. After training under the theatre director Arvind Gaur, Ranaut made her feature film debut in the 2006 thriller Gangster, for which she was awarded the Filmfare Award for Best Female Debut. She received praise for portraying emotionally intense characters in the dramas Woh Lamhe(2006), Life in a... Metro (2007) and Fashion (2008). For the last of these, she won the National Film Award for Best Supporting Actressand a Filmfare Award in the same category.

           Ranaut featured in the commercially successful films Raaz: The Mystery Continues (2009) and Once Upon a Time in Mumbaai (2010), though she was criticised for being typecast in neurotic roles. A comic role opposite R. Madhavan in the 2011 box office hit Tanu Weds Manu was well-received, though this was followed by a series of brief, glamorous roles in films that failed to propel her career forward. She then played a mutant opposite Hrithik Roshan in the science fiction film Krrish 3 (2013), one of the highest-grossing Bollywood films, and won the Filmfare and National Film Award for Best Actress for her performance in the comedy-drama Queen (2014). In 2015, Ranaut portrayed a dual role in Tanu Weds Manu Returns, the most successful Bollywood film featuring a female protagonist, for which she won a Filmfare Critics Award and a second consecutive National Film Award for Best Actress.

In 2004, the producers Ramesh Sharma and Pahlaj Nilani announced that Ranaut would make her film debut with the Deepak Shivdasani-directed I Love You Boss. The following year, an agent took her to the office of the producer Mahesh Bhatt, where she interacted with the director Anurag Basu and auditioned for the lead role in the romantic thriller Gangster. Bhatt felt that she was too young for the role and signed Chitrangada Singh instead. However, Singh was later unavailable to do the film and Ranaut was contracted as a replacement for Gangster, opting out of I Love You Boss. She was cast in the central role of Simran, an alcoholic woman caught in a romantic triangle between a notorious gangster (played by Shiney Ahuja) and a sympathetic friend (played by Emraan Hashmi). Ranaut was only seventeen while filming and said that she "had difficulty first in understanding and then unwinding from the character", describing her craft as "raw and immature".^[22] Released in 2006, Gangster emerged as a critical and commercial success and her performance was praised.^[23][24] Raja Sen of Rediff.com said that "Kangana is a remarkable find, the actress coming across with great conviction. Hers is the pivotal character and an extremely difficult role to essay, but she manages it well [...] Kangana's nuances [of an alcoholic character] are disconcertingly realistic."^[25] She won the Filmfare Award for Best Female Debut, along with various other debut awards.^[26]

Ranaut's next role was in the Mohit Suri-directed drama Woh Lamhe (2006), a semi-biographical film based on the schizophrenic actress Parveen Babi and her relationship with the director Mahesh Bhatt.^[27] She said that portraying Babi had left her emotionally drained, as she had begun to "feel her desolation and loneliness."^[28] Film critic Subhash K. Jha wrote that Ranaut "is the first female performer of Bollywood since Smita and Shabanawho isn't scared to strip her soul naked for the camera", adding that she is a "hugely expressive actress with a phenomenal ability to convey torment, hurt and incredulity through the eyes".^[29] Despite positive reviews, the film underperformed at the box office.