Preity Zinta studied criminal psychology, then stumbled into Bollywood stardom
Preity Zinta earned a postgraduate degree in criminal psychology and never meant to act. A chance meeting at a friend's birthday party landed her a chocolate advert, and tagging along to a friend's audition in Mumbai led the director Shekhar Kapur to insist she become an actress.
Zinta was born on 31 January 1975 into a family from Shimla district in Himachal Pradesh. Her father, an Indian Army officer, drilled discipline and punctuality into his children; he died in a car crash when she was thirteen, which she has called a turning point that forced her to grow up fast. A self-described tomboy, she loved Shakespeare, poetry and basketball at her Shimla boarding school, then took an English honours degree before her psychology studies.
Her first planned film with Kapur was cancelled, but he recommended her to Mani Ratnam, and she debuted in Dil Se in 1998 with only about twenty minutes on screen. Friends had teased that she would end up in white saris dancing in the rain, which pushed her toward unconventional parts. She played a teenage single mother facing prejudice in Kya Kehna, and a surrogate mother in Chori Chori Chupke Chupke, one of the first Hindi films to tackle surrogacy.
The run of hits continued. Kal Ho Naa Ho won her the Filmfare award for Best Actress, and Koi Mil Gaya and Veer-Zaara were the top-grossing Indian films of consecutive years. Working abroad for the first time, on the Canadian film Heaven on Earth, she took the Silver Hugo for best actress.
Off screen she has been just as outspoken. In the 2004 case against the film financier Bharat Shah, she was the only witness who did not withdraw her earlier statements against the Mumbai underworld, and she received a national bravery award for it. She also wrote columns for BBC News Online, and since 2008 she has co-owned the Punjab Kings in cricket's Indian Premier League.
Source: Preity Zinta
