Vidya Balan

Vidya was born in Palghat, Kerala, but didn’t stick around there long—her family packed up and moved to Chembur, Bombay, when she was just a kid. Dad’s a big shot at ETC Channel, mom runs the show at home, and her older sis Priya’s married and settled. Vidya grew up in a typical Tamil-Iyer setup, which meant Carnatic dance lessons on sleepy Sunday mornings. She bailed on those, though, not really the morning type. School happened at St. Anthony's Convent, then St. Xavier's College for sociology, and she even grabbed a master’s. While juggling all that, she dipped her toes in theater workshops at Prithvi and tried to find her groove. Vidya wasn’t always the glam queen—she's said she was kind of a tomboy and a diehard Shahrukh Khan fangirl, but things changed when she set her sights on modeling and movies. Her big break didn’t come easy. She faced rejection straight out the gate from a Tamil producer, then landed a role opposite Mohanlal, but that project tanked. So, she hustled in commercials—about 90 of them, no joke—and eventually did roles in music videos and TV serials like ‘Hum Paanch’. Her movie career finally got rolling with the Bengali film ‘Bhaalo Theko’, and then, after a marathon of screen tests, she bagged ‘Parineeta’—which pretty much changed everything. Outside of acting, Vidya’s big on charity and kids’ education, supports HIV and drug abuse causes, and somehow manages to keep her personal life squeaky clean—zero scandals, just friends, until she married producer Siddharth Roy Kapur in 2012. She’s a Sai Baba devotee, never misses a Mandir trip on Thursdays, and can rattle off in five languages, which is just showing off at this point.