Rekha, the reluctant teenage actress who reinvented herself into a Hindi film icon
Rekha wanted to be a flight attendant. When money ran short in 1968, her mother asked her to act, so she left ninth grade at 13 or 14 and went to work. Critics mocked her looks and her Hindi, and she answered by remaking herself into one of Indian cinema's finest actresses.
Born Bhanurekha Ganesan in Madras in 1954 to the actors Gemini Ganesan and Pushpavalli, she had a lonely childhood. Her father largely refused to acknowledge her, and schoolmates mocked her weight with a Tamil nickname meaning metal pot. She had tiny screen roles as a small child, including a Telugu drama made when she was one, and the lonely girl spent spare time in the school chapel.
Her adult start was bumpy. A businessman spotted her at a Madras studio, tested her by having her memorise Hindi sentences she wrote out in Latin letters, and signed her to a five-year contract. That first Hindi film stayed tangled in censorship until 1979 over a kissing scene she said she was tricked into. Her official Hindi debut, Sawan Bhadon in 1970, was a hit, even though the crew teased her South Indian background and reviewers scorned her appearance while praising her confidence and comic timing.
Stung by the criticism, she worked on her looks, her technique and her Hindi, and the transformation paid off. From 1978 she was among Hindi cinema's leading stars, staying on top through most of the 1980s and into the 1990s. She won Best Actress at the Filmfare Awards for the comedy Khubsoorat, a National Film Award for playing a courtesan in Umrao Jaan, and helped launch a wave of women-led revenge films with Khoon Bhari Maang. She moved between popular hits and neo-realist art cinema.
Her later career included a third Filmfare trophy for playing an underworld boss in 1996 and mother roles in Koi... Mil Gaya and Krrish, the latter her biggest box-office success. She has appeared in more than 200 films, received the Padma Shri in 2010 and sat in the upper house of India's parliament from 2012 to 2018, while largely avoiding interviews.
Source: Rekha
