Jaya Bachchan: Lesser known facts about the veteran actress

Jaya Bachchan turns a year older on April 9. On the occasion of her birthday, let's take a look at some interesting facts about the actress turned politician

Jaya Bachchan was born as Jaya Bhaduri in Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, on April 9, 1948. She is known for her relevant and naturalistic style of acting in Hindi cinema. Jaya Bachchan has won countless accolades in her long cinematic career, including the Padma Shri by the Government of India in 1992.

Jaya Bachchan started her journey in films with the Bengali movie Mahanagar, which came out in 1963. The actress, however, entered Bollywood with the much-acclaimed film Guddi, in which her performance as a schoolgirl obsessed with Dharmendra is still widely regarded.

In 1973, Jaya Bachchan married Amitabh Bachchan and had two children with him - Abhishek Bachchan and Shweta Bachchan Nanda.

Let's take a look at some other interesting facts about the veteran actress:

Koshish (1972), in which Jaya Bachchan and Sanjeev Kumar played a deaf and mute couple, is considered among the actress' best performances ever. It was a remake of the Japanese film Happiness Of Us Alone.

Jaya's strength as a lead heroine was that she was equally adept at commercial as well as offbeat cinema, which explains her success while collaborating with directors as diverse as Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Gulzar, Ramesh Sippy and Prakash Mehra.

Amitabh Bachchan and Jaya Bachchan worked together for the first time in the 1972 film Bansi Birju. Some of Big B-Jaya's famous films as a pair are Zanjeer (1973), Abhimaan (1973), Mili (1975), Chupke Chupke (1975), Sholay (1975) and Silsila (1981).

Jaya Bachchan was pregnant with her first child, Shweta, during the filming of Sholay. Following Yash Chopra's Silsila, Jaya decided to take a prolonged break from acting to concentrate on family.

Amitabh and Jaya's second child, Abhishek, was born on February 5, 1976. After a huge gap of 17 years, Jaya Bachchan returned to the big screen with the 1998 film Hazaar Chaurasi Ki Maa.

Since 2000, Jaya Bachchan has acted in a handful of films, a couple of which have been major hits, namely Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham and Kal Ho Naa Ho. We wish the actress par excellence a very happy birthday!

Also read: Jaya Bachchan birthday trivia: Did you know that she was a gold medallist from FTII?

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