Leena Chandavarkar

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29 August 1950 . Born in Dharwad

Leena Chandavarkar was a baby faced very pretty and charming woman who came into the limelight after finishing as one of the runners-up for the Fresh Face Competition organized across the Country by Filmfare. She started her career by working in advertisements and eventually ventured into the films. She had an arranged marriage to her first husband , Siddharth Bandodkar who came from a prominent political family in Goa. He died from an accidental gunshot, a few days after their marriage leaving Leena a widow at the age of 25. A few years later she defied her parents to marry the singing legend Kishore Kumar . Her father had raised an objection because Kishore Kumar was not only married three times earlier but was also 20 years older than Leena, but he later soon came around and welcomed Kumar into the family as the Son-in-law. She has a son with Kishore Kumar named Sumit Ganguly. Kishore Kumar passed away in 1987 leaving Leena once again a widow at the age of 37. The age difference between them of 21 years and she was merely two years older than his son Amit. Leena had first seen Kishore Kumar while shooting for her debut film, Man Ka Meet in 1968, but it was a brief encounter. It was not until the year 1979, that the actress finally was introduced to the legend on purely professional reasons . It was during the film, ' Pyar Ajnabi Hai , they both came closer but the starry-eyed actress who hero worshipped Kishore Kumar was not in love with the star as the death of her young first husband was still fresh in mind. Their lives were not meant to intersect, not in the way it eventually did. She lives with her son Sumit and her step son Amit his wife and with Amit's mother.

She made her debut in the film, ' Man ka Meet ' with Sunil Dutt and it was his wife Nargis who groomed her to be an actress. Since then she has about 30 to 35 films to her credit and was a popular actress of her times. Between 1969 to 1979, Leena Chandavarkar she was a starcast opposite to many popular heros of that Era. She gave her best performance in the film Mehboob Ki Mehndi opposite to Rajesh Khanna in 1971 . Her film 'Manchali' opposite to Sanjeev Kumar was a hit film loved by the masses for the song compositions . Bairaag is another good film where she acted with the great screen legend, Dilip Kumar with a starcast of Saira Banu, Prem Chopra and Helen. Admist a stiff competition, Leena's achievements are quite significant. Leena is remembered as a petite beautiful woman who did not fit the bill and could not compete with the Bombshells like Zeenat Aman, Reena Roy , Parveen Babi , Neetu Singh and slowly moved out of the film industry . She was in the news for wrong reasons, quite recently in 2015 much after she had quit the film industry. Ever since the pictures of Leena and Supreme Court Lawyer Ram Jetmalani kissing went viral, her phone hasnt stopped ringing. The yesteryear actress maintained she doesnt care. Apart from her grief of losing her husband the 2nd time whom she was in love with , respected him , worshipped him, she also had to tackle whole lot of salacious rumours regarding her proximity with her stepson Amit Kumar . Despite lot of pressure, Leena Chandavarkar chose to stay on with her step son Amit and his family. She believes that Amit loves her son Sumeet ver much and she didnt want to deprive him of the only family he had. Leena Chandavarkar is in tune with the family close to Kishore Kumar;s family and is keen to see Amit and Sumeet make a great music together . She has pitched to write for their music albums.