Kajol

Kajol Devgn (née Mukherjee) (born 5 August 1974), known mononymously as Kajol, is an Indian film actress. She has received six Filmfare Awards from eleven nominations, and along with her late aunt Nutan, holds the record for most Best Actress wins at Filmfare, with five. In 2011, the Government of India awarded her with the Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award of the country. 

Born to actress Tanuja and film director Shomu Mukherjee, Kajol made her acting debut with Bekhudi (1992) while still in school. She quit her studies to pursue acting, and had her first commercial success with the 1993 thriller Baazigar. She subsequently earned wide public recognition for playing leading roles in several blockbuster family dramas, including Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (1995), Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998), and Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham... (2001). She earned critical appreciation for playing against type in the 1997 mystery film Gupt and the 1998 psychological thriller Dushman. Following a sabbatical from full-time acting in 2001, Kajol returned to film with the 2006 romantic thriller, Fanaa. She continued working infrequently through the rest of the decade, and earned critical acclaim for her work in U Me Aur Hum (2008) and My Name Is Khan (2010). She, thus, established herself as one of India's most successful female actors.

Kajol is a social activist and is noted for her work with widows and children, for which she received the Karmaveer Puraskaar in 2008. She has featured as a talent judge for Zee TV's reality show, Rock-N-Roll Family (2008) and holds a managerial position at Devgn Entertainment and Software. Kajol has been in a relationship with actor Ajay Devgn since 1995. In 1999, they married, and she gave birth to their daughter, Nysa, in 2003 and their son, Yug, in 2010.

Kajol was born in Mumbai to the Mukherjee-Samarth film family of Bengali-Marathi descent. Her mother, Tanuja, is an actress, while her father Shomu Mukherjee was a film director and producer. He died in 2008 after suffering cardiac arrest. Her younger sister, Tanisha Mukherjee is also an actress. Her maternal aunt was the late actress Nutan and her maternal grandmother, Shobhna Samarth, and great grandmother, Rattan Bai, were both involved in Hindi cinema. Her paternal uncles, Joy Mukherjee and Deb Mukherjee, are film producers, while her paternal grandfather, Sashadhar Mukherjee, was a filmmaker. Kajol's cousins Rani Mukerji, Sharbani Mukherjee and Mohnish Behl are also Bollywood actors; whereas another cousin of hers, Ayan Mukerji is a director.

Kajol describes herself as being "extremely mischievous" as a child. She added that she was stubborn and impulsive from a very young age. Her parents separated when she was young; but according to Tanuja, Kajol was not affected by the split as "we never argued in front of [her]". In the absence of her mother, Kajol was looked after by her maternal grandmother, who "never let me feel that my mother was away and working". According to Kajol, her mother inculcated a sense of independence in her at a very young age. Growing up between two separate cultures, she inherited her "Maharashtrian pragmatism" from her mother and her "Bengali temperament" from her father.

Kajol studied at the St Joseph Convent boarding school in Panchgani, where she was appointed as the head girl. Apart from her studies, she participated in extra-curricular activities, such as dancing. It was in school that she began to form an active interest in reading fiction, as it helped her "through the bad moments" in her life. At the age of sixteen, she began work on Rahul Rawail's film Bekhudi, which according to her was a "big dose of luck". She initially intended to return to school after shooting for the film during her summer vacations. However, she eventually dropped out of school to pursue a full-time career in film. On not completing her education, she quoted, "I don't think I am any less well-rounded because I didn't complete school".