Kalki Koechlin

Kalki Koechlin (French: [kalki kœʃlɛ̃]) (born 10 January 1984) is an Indian film actress of French descent who debuted in Anurag Kashyap's critically acclaimed Hindi film Dev.D. She played the character of Chandramukhi in Dev.D, which is a modern take on Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay's Bengali novella Devdas and eventually won the Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actress for it (2009).

Koechlin featured in Zindagi Na Milegi Dobarawhich was commercially and critically successful, and for which she earned her second nomination in the Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actress category (2011). She also works as a co-screenwriter with husband Anurag Kashyap.

Her father Joel Koechlin came to India from France, 38 years ago and met her mother, Francoise Armandie, at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Auroville, Pondicherry. Her parents are devotees of Sri Aurobindo. Eventually they settled in Kallatty, a village near Ooty, where he established a business designing hang-gliders and microlight aircraft, and Kalki was born here. Her ancestor Maurice Koechlin, a French structural engineer, played an important role in the design and construction of the Eiffel Tower.

Koechlin studied at Hebron School, Ooty and her parents then insisted she attend university. Koechlin studied drama and theatre in Goldsmiths, University of London, where she also worked with a theatre company called Theatre of Relativity for two years. She performed in various plays like David Hare’s The Blue Room, Marivaux’s The Dispute and a devised play The Rise of the Wild Hunt in her two-year stint with the theatre group.

She married filmmaker Anurag Kashyap on April 30, 2011 in a private wedding ceremony in Ooty. The two had been dating since the release of Dev.D. Koechlin was unemployed for a year and a half after Dev.D. Koechlin was cast in her husband's next films That Girl in Yellow Boots, both produced and directed by Kashyap and Shaitan which was produced by Kashyap but directed by Bejoy Nambiar.