Shabana Azmi
Azmi has theatrical heritage; her mother is a stage actress, her father a writer and poet. Azmi attended the Film and Television Institute of India and after making her debut on screen in 1974 experienced a meteoric rise to fame as one of the leading ladies of Parallel Cinema which was known for its realism and gritty, modern productions. Azmi has won five National Film Awards in the Best Actress Category - a record among her peers.
Rahul Khanna
Khanna is the son of Vinod Khanna, a respected actor who went on to become a politician. Khanna Junior studied method acting under Lee Strasberg and made his big-screen debut in Earth. He later became one of Bollywood's more popular starts before making a sideways move to television in 2013.
Aamir Khan
The Ellen de Generes of his native India, Khan is an actor, director and talk show host who is one of the most popular actors in India largely due to his performances in Hindi films. He is also extremely popular outside of his home country, most notably in Asia, which makes him one of the most famous actors in the world. He has appeared in two Bollywood movies for which he was awarded a Bollywood People's Choice Award, and has also been nominated for an Oscar for the movie Lagaan, which was nominated in the Best Foreign Language Film category.
Nandita Das
With more than forty films in ten different languages under her acting belt, Das is an acclaimed Indian actor and director whose directorial debut was rewarded with an incredible twenty different awards over its appearances at fifty different film festivals. Although an Indian actress, she is sometimes more revered by the French movie elite thanks in large part to her efforts in cementing a partnership between France and India in a development of cooperative cinema. She has even appeared on a French stamp. Das is the first Indian to be inducted into the International Women's Forum Hall of Fame.
Kitu Gidwani
More well known as a television serial actress, Gidwani has created performances that have gone largely unnoticed because the serials in which she appeared lacked mass audience appeal. She came to public prominence after a recurring role on the series Air Hostess , a Hindi show in which she played one of the two female leads. Her most acclaimed role was in the movie Dance of the Wind, for which she received a Best Actress Award at the Three Continents Film Festival in France.
Arif Zakaria
Although he has appeared an a number of popular films, beginning with Darmiyaan in 1987, it is for the controversial film Nanak Shah Fakiir, in which he portrayed a Sikh guru, that he became best known, as the film was banned by Sikh organizations for its depiction of the faith. More recently, Zakaria has performed in musical theater, touring the world as a member of the cast of the Australian musical Merchants of Bollywood.
