Bhumi Pednekar

Bhumi Pednekar is a renowned Bollywood actress born to late Satish and Sumitra. Her father was a former 'Maharashtra home and labor minister' while her mother worked as an activist fighting for the anti-tobacco regime after her husband passed away suffering from oral cancer.

Pednekar worked at Yash Raj Films as a casting director for six years before making her acting debut in Sharat Katariya's My Big Fat Bride (2015), in which she played the obese wife of Ayushmann Khurrana's character. She was widely appreciated for her performance in the movie and won the Filmfare Award, Screen Award, and International Indian Film Academy Award for Best Female Debut for her work.

She was cast in the satirical film Toilet: A Love Story (2017) opposite Akshay Kumar as a young lady in rural India who campaigns to enhance sanitation conditions, especially in rural areas. It grossed over 3 billion (about US$38 million) worldwide, making it one of the year's highest-grossing films and Pednekar's highest-grossing film overall.

Pednekar's first nomination for Filmfare Award for Best Actress was in the same year for her performance opposite Ayushmann Khurrana in the comedy Shubh Mangal Savdhan (2017), which revolved around male impotence in India.

In 2018, Pednekar played a maid in a relationship with her boss on the Netflix anthology series Lust Stories (2018). Her first film of 2019 was the Abhishek Chaubey-directed criminal thriller Sonchiriya (2019). She co-starred as a young housewife on the run with the late actor Sushant Singh Rajput and Manoj Bajpayee in the rural region of Chambal. In Saand Ki Aankh (2019), which came out the next year, she played Chandro Tomar, a sharpshooter in her 70s. Her sister-in-law, Prakashi Tomar, was played by Taapsee Pannu. Pannu and Pednekar spent a lot of time with the two women and shot a lot of targets for practice.

In Bala (2019), Pednekar reprised her role as a headstrong small-town teen. This was her third time working with Khurrana; in this film, she played a woman with a dark complexion who faced prejudice. And in Pati Patni Aur Woh (2019), a remake of the 1978 film, she played the role of a housewife whose husband was having an affair.

Alankrita Shrivastava directed Dolly Kitty and Those Twinkling Stars (2019), which had its world premiere at the 24th Busan International Film Festival in 2019 and was released on Netflix in 2020. After that, she played a small role in the comedy-drama Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan (2020) and the horror movie Bhoot: Part One - The Haunted Ship (2020).

Pednekar appeared in Durgamati: The Myth (2020), the Hindi version of the horror film Bhaagamathie (2018). After a year from the silver screen, Pednekar and Rajkummar Rao starred in the comedy-drama Badhaai Do (2022) as homosexuals in a lavender marriage.

Her appearance with Akshay Kumar in Aanand L. Rai's Raksha Bandhan (2022), a family comedy, has also been immensely praised. She next appeared in the Disney+ Hotstar comedy-suspense film Govinda Naam Mera (2022) with Vicky Kaushal and Kiara Advani, directed by Shashank Khaitan.

Her first movie My Big Fat Bride (2015) got her seven awards. She also won Zee Cine Awards for her movie Bala (2019) as the best supporting actress in 2020. Later in the same year, she was awarded the best actress award (critics) for her movie Saand Ki Aankh (2019) by Screen Awards, which was shared with Taapsee Pannu as well. Another Best actress (critics) award came her way in 2020 for her role in Sonchiriya (2019).

Pednekar also appeared in four episodes of Man's World (2015), a satire on YouTube made by Y-Films about what would happen if women treated men the way men treat women.

In 2020, she collaborated with MTV India on the Nisedh campaign that aimed at increasing young people's understanding of women's health care.