Bhumi Pednekar

Pati Patni Aur Woh, a remake of a 1978 film of the same name and co-starring Kartik Aaryan and Ananya Panday, featured her as a housewife with a philandering husband.

Bhumi Pednekar ( born 18 July 1989) is an Indian actress who works in Hindi films.

Known for her portrayals of headstrong small-town women, she is the recipient of several awards including three Filmfare Awards.

Pednekar was born in Bombay (now Mumbai) on 18 July 1989.

She is of Marathi and Haryanvi descent; her father, Satish Pednekar, was a former MLA and Home and Labour Minister of Maharashtra.

Her mother, Sumitra Pednekar, worked as an anti-tobacco activist after the death of her husband from oral cancer.

She did her schooling from Arya Vidya Mandir in Juhu.

At the age of 15, her parents took out a study loan for her to study acting at Whistling Woods International, but she was expelled due to poor attendance.

Within a year and a half, she joined Yash Raj Films as an assistant casting director, and paid off the loan.

She went on to work with the company for six years under Shanoo Sharma.

After working as an assistant casting director at Yash Raj Films for six years, she made her film debut as an overweight bride in the company's romantic comedy Dum Laga Ke Haisha (2015), which earned her the Filmfare Award for Best Female Debut.

Pednekar's acting debut came as the overweight wife of Ayushmann Khurrana's character in the Yash Raj Films-produced and Sharat Katariya-directed romantic comedy Dum Laga Ke Haisha (2015).

In preparation, she gained almost 12 kg body weight.

Rajeev Masand reviewed, "Pednekar steals the film with an assured turn, effortlessly making you care for Sandhya, without ever reducing her to a slobbering, self-pitying caricature."

After filming, she began losing weight and shared methods and tips of the process through her social media.

A commercial success, Dum Laga Ke Haisha won the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Hindi and earned Pednekar the Filmfare Award for Best Female Debut.

That year she was featured in Y-Films's four part mini web series Man's World.

Based on the subject of gender inequality, it digitally premiered on YouTube.

She rose to prominence starring in the commercially successful filmsToilet: Ek Prem Katha (2017), Shubh Mangal Saavdhan (2017), Bala (2019) and Pati Patni Aur Woh (2019).For her performances as the septuagenarian sharpshooter Chandro Tomar in Saand Ki Aankh (2019), a closeted lesbian in Badhaai Do (2022) and she twice won the Filmfare Critics Award for Best Actress.This success was followed by a series of commercially unsuccessful films, with the exception of Bhakshak (2024).

Off-screen, Pednekar is an environmentalist, and as of 2023, raises awareness on climate change for the United Nations Development Programme.

Two years later, Pednekar was cast in the satire Toilet: Ek Prem Katha (2017) as a young woman in rural India who insists on the eradication of open defecation, opposite Akshay Kumar.

Despite disliking the story, Saibal Chatterjee of NDTV praised her for "flesh[ing] out a refreshingly relatable college topper who becomes the principal catalyst for a mini-revolution".

With a worldwide gross of over inr 3000000000, it emerged as one of the highest-grossing Hindi films of the year and Pednekar's biggest grosser.

Later that year, her performance opposite Khurrana in Shubh Mangal Saavdhan, a satire on erectile dysfunction, earned Pednekar her first nomination for the Filmfare Award for Best Actress.

Reviewing the film for The Indian Express, Shubhra Gupta wrote that Pednekar "once again reminds us just how convincing she can be as a real honest-to-goodness young woman in search of love", but bemoaned that she was being typecast in such roles.

Shubh Mangal Saavdhan grossed inr 700000000 worldwide.

Zoya Akhtar's segment in the Netflix anthology film Lust Stories marked Pednekar's sole screen appearance of 2018; she played a maid who has an affair with her employer.

Writing for NDTV, Raja Sen considered Akhtar's segment to be the best in the anthology, and found Pednekar "hauntingly good" in it.

Abhishek Chaubey's crime drama Sonchiriya was Pednekar's first release of 2019.

She played a young housewife on the run in rural Chambal, alongside Sushant Singh Rajput and Manoj Bajpayee.

In preparation, she underwent two and a half months of physical training to portray her character's mannerism and gait; she also learned to fire a gun.

Rahul Desai of Film Companion praised the subtlety in the film and its performances, and credited Pednekar for "lend[ing] an inevitable sense of womanhood to the silenced".

She next starred as the septuagenarian sharpshooter Chandro Tomar in Tushar Hiranandani's biographical film Saand Ki Aankh, opposite Taapsee Pannu who played her sister-in-law Prakashi Tomar.

In preparation, Pannu and Pednekar spent time with the two women and trained in shooting a gun.

She suffered from skin allergies from filming in the heat wearing prosthetic make-up.

Udita Jhunjunwala of Mint wrote, "Pannu and Pednekar are wonderful and spunky and embrace their parts even though their body language and posture is variable".

Both actresses were jointly awarded the Screen Award and Filmfare Critics Award for Best Actress.

Continuing her portrayals of headstrong small-town women, Pednekar starred in Bala and Pati Patni Aur Woh (both 2019).

The former marked her third collaboration with Khurrana, in which she played a dark-skinned woman who faces prejudice due to her skin colour.

Controversy arose for casting a fair-skinned woman in the role, but Pednekar defended herself by saying that an actor should be allowed to play any part.