I have been thinking of doing this for a long time now and so here is a short biography of Rekha the actress. I not only admire her as a person but am also named after her.

Till date, no diva has matched her beauty, her charisma, and her class. She is elegant and a woman of few words, where media have tried to intrude into her personal life however Rekha chooses to keep mum. The 51-year old lets her 1000-watt smile do all the talking.

No one really knows the real Rekha. To Rekha, her mask is both a protecting shield and a tragic face of stardom. She wants it on, but she also wants it peeled off, so she would feel like herself again. Rekha has undergone too much stress as a person and as a professional, to remember the original self.

She is the daughter of renowned Tamil actor Gemini Ganesan and the Telugu actress Pushpavalli. Rekha's parents were not married, and her father did not acknowledge his paternity during her childhood. It was during the early 1970s, when she was looking for a footing in the Bollywood film industry, that she revealed her origins. Later, at the peak of her career, Rekha told a magazine interviewer that her father's neglect still rankled and that she had ignored his efforts at reconciliation.

Rekha has acted in over 180 films in her around 40 years of career. Taking part in both Indian mainstream cinema and art cinema, known in India as parallel cinema, she has achieved commercial success, as well as critical praise for her performances throughout the years.

Date of Birth

10 October 1954, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India

Birth Name

Bhanurekha Gemini Ganesan

Nickname

The Bollywood Queen
Re
Madame X
Rekhaji

Height

5' 7" (1.70 m)

Mini Biography

Bhanurekha was born in the Telugu-speaking Ganesan household; she has seven sisters and one brother. One of her sisters is Dr. Kamala Selvaraj, while another one, Radha, lives in San Francisco with a son named Naveed, who is being readied to act in Bollywood movies.

No stranger to the tinsel screen, Bhanurekha acted in a Telugu movie 'Rangula Ratnam' as Baby Bhanurekha along with her mom during 1966, which was subsequently re-made and released in Hindi during 1976 as 'Rangeela Ratan'. She acted in one more Telugu as well as one Kannada movie (Amma Kosam and Goadalli CID 999 respectively) before re-locating to Bombay.

Due to her background, she ended up being very gloomy and pessimistic during her early years. Her debut in Bollywood movies was during 1970’s with 'Sawan Bhadon' opposite Navin Nischal with a screen name of Rekha. Inability to speak Hindi, a dusky complexion as well as her weight did not exactly add to her assets in a predominantly fair-skinned, Hindi-speaking North-Indian film industry.

She decided to take matters seriously, took Yoga, shed those extra pounds, learned Hindi and dancing, and thus was born a new and much improved Rekha - who went on to deliver one box office hit after another for example 'Nagin', 'Muqadar Ka Sikander', 'Mr. Natwarlal', 'Khubsoorat', 'Umrao Jaan', 'Khoon Bhari Maang', the school-maarmish housewife of Ijaazat  amongst others.

Her first performance-oriented role came in 1976 when she played an ambitious woman in Do Anjaane, co-starring Amitabh Bachchan. The film was a hit, as well as a critical success, and she was widely noticed for her performance.

However, her most significant turning point came in 1978, when she portrayed the role of a rape victim in the movie Ghar, alongside Vinod Mehra. The film was considered her first notable milestone, as she got critical acclaim for her performance, and received her first nomination for Best Actress at the Filmfare. In that same year, she first attained real fame with Muqaddar Ka Sikandar, in which she co-starred once again with Amitabh Bachchan. The movie was the biggest hit of that year, as well as one of the biggest hits of the decade, and Rekha was set as one of the most successful actresses of these times. Apart from being a commercial success, the film opened to positive critical reception, and Rekha's performance earned her a Best Supporting Actress nomination at the Filmfare.

In her later years she has taken up character roles and appeared as a mother, even a grandmother in 'Krrish' during 2006.

Her slim, slender looks got her many admirers, including well established Bollywood actors such as Kiran Kumar, Jeetendra, Vinod Mehra, and Amitabh Bachchan. Her marriage to Vinod ended in a divorce, and she ended up getting married to a businessman, Mukesh Aggarwal. This marriage resulted, too, in a divorce, with Mukesh killing himself shortly thereafter.

She likes to surf the Internet, has written biographies of actresses like Zeenat Aman, and Salma Agha on IMDB, likes to collect old photographs and postcards, mimic people, watch movies, and practices Yoga regularly, read comics like Archie and Dennie the Menace, and is a vegetarian. She now lives with her Secretary, Farzana, and pets in a self-owned bungalow in Bandra (West) in Mumbai.

There is more to her than just what is on this page....