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]
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]
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