Priyanka Chopra

Priyanka Chopra (pronounced born 18 July 1982) is an Indian actress, singer, philanthropist, and the winner of the Miss World 2000 pageant. One of India's highest-paid actresses and one of the nation's most popular celebrities, Chopra has also gained recognition for her sense of style. She has received numerous awards, including a National Film Award, and five Filmfare Awards, and was awarded the Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award, by the Government of India in 2016. That same year, Time named her as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.
Although Chopra initially aspired to study engineering or psychiatry, she accepted offers to join the Indian film industry, which came as a result of her pageant wins, making her Hindi film debut in The Hero in 2003. She played the leading lady in the box-office hits Andaaz (2003) and Mujhse Shaadi Karogi (2004), and earned praise for her breakout role in the 2004 thriller Aitraaz. In 2006, Chopra established herself as a leading actress of Indian cinema with starring roles in the top-grossing productions Krrish and Don. Following a brief setback, she received critical acclaim for playing a troubled model in the drama Fashion (2008), which won her the National Film Award for Best Actress and the Filmfare Award for Best Actress. Chopra subsequently gained recognition for her versatility in portraying a range of unconventional characters in the films Kaminey (2009), 7 Khoon Maaf (2011), Barfi! (2012), Mary Kom (2014), Dil Dhadakne Do (2015), and Bajirao Mastani (2015), all of which garnered her critical acclaim and several accolades. In 2015, she began starring as Alex Parrish on the ABC thriller series Quantico, becoming the first South Asian woman to headline an American network series.
In addition to her acting career, Chopra is noted for her philanthropic work, and was appointed as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador for Child Rights in 2010. She promotes various causes such as environment, health and education, and women's rights, and is particularly vocal about gender equality, and gender pay gap. Though she is reticent to discuss her personal life in public, her off-screen life is the subject of substantial media coverage. As a singer, she has released three singles. Chopra is also the founder of the production company Purple Pebble Pictures.

Early life

Priyanka Chopra was born on 18 July 1982 in Jamshedpur, Bihar (now in Jharkhand), to Ashok and Madhu Chopra, both physicians in the Indian Army. Her father was a Punjabi from Ambala. Her mother, from Jharkhand, is the eldest daughter of Ms. Madhu Jyotsna Akhouri, a former member of Bihar Legislative Assembly, and Dr. Manohar Kishan Akhouri, a former Congress veteran. Chopra has a brother, Siddharth, who is seven years her junior and actresses Parineeti Chopra, Meera Chopra and Mannara are her cousins.Due to her parents' occupations the family relocated to a number of places in India, including Delhi, Chandigarh, Ambala, Ladakh, Lucknow, Bareilly, and Pune. Among the schools she attended were La Martiniere Girls' School in Lucknow and St. Maria Goretti College in Bareilly. In an interview published in Daily News and Analysis, Chopra said that she did not mind travelling regularly and changing schools; she welcomed it as a new experience and a way to discover India's multicultural society. Among the many places that she lived, Chopra has fond memories as a child of playing in the valleys of Leh, in the cold northwestern Indian desert region of Jammu and Kashmir. She has said, "I think I was in Class 4 when I was in Leh. My brother was just born. My dad was in the army and was posted there. I stayed in Leh for a year and my memories of that place are tremendous ... We were all army kids there. We weren't living in houses, we were in bunkers in the valley and there was a stupa right on top of a hill which used to overlook our valley. We used to race up to the top of the stupa". She now considers Bareilly her home town, and maintains strong connections there.


At the age of thirteen, Chopra moved to the United States to study, living with her aunt, and attending schools in Newton, Massachusetts, and Cedar Rapids, Iowa, after a stop in Queens, New York, as her aunt's family also moved frequently. While in Massachusetts, she participated in several theatre productions and studied Western classical music, choral singing and Kathak dance. During her teenage years in America, Chopra sometimes faced racial issues and was bullied for being Indian. She has said, "I was a gawky kid, had low self-esteem, came from a modest middle-class background, had white marks on my legs ... But I was damn hard working. Today, my legs sell 12 brands."

After three years, Chopra returned to India, finishing the senior yearof her high-school education at the Army Public School in Bareilly. During this period, she won the local "May Queen" beauty pageant, after which she was pursued by admirers, leading her family to equip their home with bars for her protection. Her mother then entered her in the Femina Miss India contest of 2000; she finished second, winning the Femina Miss India World title. Chopra then went on to the Miss World pageant, where she was crowned Miss World 2000 and Miss World Continental Queen of Beauty—Asia & Oceania at the Millennium Dome in London on 30 November 2000. Chopra was the fifth Indian contestant to win Miss World, and the fourth to do so in seven years. She had enrolled in college, but left after winning the Miss World pageant. Chopra said that the Miss India and Miss World titles brought her recognition, and she then began receiving offers for film roles.

Chopra has maintained a strong relationship with her family, including her younger brother, Siddharth, and lives in an apartment on the same floor as her family. She was especially close to her father, who died in June 2013; in 2012, she got a tattoo reading "Daddy's lil girl", in his handwriting. Having not come from a film background, she describes herself as a self-made woman. Her mother, a well-established gynaecologist in Bareilly, gave up her practice to support Chopra as she embarked upon a film career.

Acting career

Debut and breakthrough (2002–04)

After winning Miss India World, Chopra was cast as the female lead in Abbas-Mustan's romantic thriller Humraaz (2002), in which she was to make her film debut. However, this fell through for various reasons: she stated the production conflicted with her schedule, while the producers said they re-cast because Chopra took on various other commitments. Her screen debut occurred in the 2002 Tamil film Thamizhan as the love interest of the protagonist, played by Vijay. A review published in The Hindu was appreciative of the film for its wit and dialogue, however it felt that Chopra's role was limited from an acting viewpoint.
In 2003, Chopra made her Bollywood film debut as the second female lead opposite Sunny Deol and Preity Zinta in Anil Sharma's The Hero: Love Story of a Spy. Set against the backdrop of the Indian Army in Kashmir, the film tells the story of an agent and his fight against terrorism. The Hero was one of the highest-grossing Bollywood films that year, but received mixed reviews from critics. Derek Elley from Variety said that "mega-looker Chopra makes a solid screen debut." Later that year she appeared in Raj Kanwar's box-office success Andaaz with Akshay Kumar, again sharing the female lead (this time with the debuting Lara Dutta). Chopra played a vivacious young girl who falls in love with Kumar's character. The Hindustan Times noted the glamour that she brought to the role;Kunal Shah of Sify praised her performance and stated she had "all the qualities to be a star." Her performance earned her the Filmfare Award for Best Female Debut (along with Dutta) and a nomination for the Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Chopra's first three releases in 2004—Plan, Kismat, and Asambhav—performed poorly at the box-office. Chopra was typically cast during this earlier period as a "glamour quotient", in roles that were considered "forgettable" by film critic Joginder Tuteja. Later that year she starred with Salman Khan and Akshay Kumar in David Dhawan's romantic comedy Mujhse Shaadi Karogi, which became the third-highest-grossing film of the year in India and emerged as a major commercial success.
In late 2004, she starred opposite Kumar and Kareena Kapoor in Abbas-Mustan's thriller Aitraaz. Chopra considers her first role as an antagonist, portraying Soniya Roy, an ambitious woman who accuses her employee of sexual harassment, as the "biggest learning experience of her career." The film was a critical and commercial success, and Chopra's performance received critical acclaim. Author Rini Bhattacharya credited her for bringing back the seductress to the silver screen. The Hindustan Times cited it as the film that changed her career significantly.A reviewer writing for the BBC said, "Aitraaz is Priyanka Chopra's film. As the deliciously wicked, gold digging, scheming seductress, she chews up every scene she is in with her magnetic screen presence." She won a Filmfare Award for Best Performance in a Negative Role, becoming the second and final actress to win the award after Kajol (the category was discontinued in 2008).Chopra also received a nomination for the Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actress, and the Producers Guild Film Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role.