Nandita Das

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She was born in Mumbai to an artist Jatin Das and Varsha Das, a writer. But the major part of her childhood was in Delhi.  She has one brother Siddhartha Das who is a creative designer.

In 2002 Nandita married Saumya Sen . The couple together started the media organization called the Leapfrog which geared up to make only socially conscious films.  However, the couple divorced in the year 2007. She dated Subodh Maskara , a Mumbai journalist for a couple of months and in 2010 she married him and moved to Mumbai again.   Subodh and Nandita have one son named Vihaan. Unfortunately, this marriage also did not last long and the couple parted ways in 2017.

Nandita has always remained an atheist through her life.

She worked for Children’s rights, for HIV/AIDS awareness and towards the cause for violence against women.   In 2009 Nandita got appointed as the Chairperson of the Children’s Film Society of India. 

In 2012 she was the guest of honor for the I volunteer Awards which was held in Mumbai.

She was one of the petitioner for the Pakistani terrorist Ajman Kasab to have sought mercy for him who was involved in the Mumbai attacks. 

She also donated to Tarun Tejpal’s magazine Tehelka for the investigative journalism.

Das also supported the campaign “Dark is Beautiful” in the year 2013. It was launched by Women of Worth and aimed at the discrimination towards the skin colour in India.  The company urged the women and men to celebrate the diversity in the women and the skin tones.

Nandita Das is also a speaker at various platforms in India and abroad and in 2016, she gave TEDx Talk on the Biggest Hypocrisy of Our Times.: Our Attitude to Poverty.  In

2011. she had spoken on the Transformation of Education.

Nandita has worked in over 40 features films that included top directors as Mrinal Sen, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Shyam Benegal, Deepa Mehta, Mani Ratnam to name a few.  Her acting career or her roles in the films started first with the theatre group Jana Natya Manch. .

She is remembered for her roles in Deepa Mehta’s film Fire released in 1996, followed by Earth in 1998 along with Aamir Khan . She has acted in many films and has been an actress for ten different languages, namely English, Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, Urdu, Marathi, Kannada and Odia.

Das has co-directed a play called Between the Lines in 2014 and was also a part of the 2017 film Khamosh ! Adalat Jaari Hai by Vijay Tendulkar.

She has been in the films since 1989 and her most recent film that is upcoming is Albert Pinto Ko Gussa Kyon Aata Hai 2 which is all set for its release on Friday the 12th April 2019.

Nandita Das got popular with her film on Manto in 2018. Her directorial for this film was with the actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui and the film did very well and was also premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and at Toronto International Film Festival.

She has not only acted in several films but also has directed many. One of them is her directorial debut Firaaq , a fiction based on true stories based on the 2002 Gujarat riots.

Her other films are Bawandar in 2000, Kannathil Muthamittal in 2002, Azhagi in same year, Kamli in 2006 and Before the Rains in 2006 to name a few.  She has been in cinema for over 40 films in the span of the years that she worked in as an actress and as well as a director that got her popularity in the Bollywood.