Born on November 1, 1986, Ileana D'Cruz was born in Mumbai into a Goan family. She was 10 when her family shifted to Goa. Ileana, who is a well-known actress in Bollywood as well as the South film industry, started out as a model and various television and print ads. (All pictures/Ileana D'Cruz's Instagram account)
Ileana D'Cruz was 20 when she started off her career in the film industry. She made her debut in the Telugu film industry with Devadasu and Tamil debut with Devadasu in 2006.
In picture: A still from the 2012 movie Barfi.
Ileana D'Cruz went on to appear in commercially successful ventures Pokiri (2006), Jalsa (2008) and Kick (2009), establishing herself as one of Telugu cinema's leading actresses.
In picture: A picture from Ileana D'Cruz's childhood days.
Ileana D'Cruz worked in more than 15 films in her six-year-long career in the South, before making a debut in the Hindi film industry with the Ranbir Kapoor-starrer Barfi (2012).
"I keep joking, I was the Akshay Kumar of South, I used to do four films a year," Ileana D'Cruz had once said in an interview.
Talking about her Bollywood journey, Ileana D'Cruz appeared in films such as Phata Poster Nikla Hero (2013), Happy Ending (2014), Main Tera Hero (2014), Rustom (2016), Baadshaho (2017), Mubarakan (2017), Raid (2018) and Pagalpanti (2019).
Ileana D'Cruz has a fetish for rings. She is said to have a collection of over 300 pieces, mostly in silver, picked up during her sojourns to different parts of the world.
In picture: Ileana with her Happy Ending co-star Saif Ali Khan's wife actress Kareena Kapoor Khan.
Ileana D'Cruz has a fetish for shoes too! "I am an absolute shoe person. If I had it my way, I would have an entire room of shelves of shoes everywhere," Ileana told IANS.
Do you know the pretty actress had to struggle to accept her "unusual" body type and even dealt with issues for a very long time?
"There was a point when I was super skinny. And I have had body issues for very long. I was at my lightest weight and even then I felt 'Oh my God I am so fat.' I am not too open about my body type. I have an unusual body type. I've reached a phase now where I am like, 'you know what, I am not super happy with the way I look, but I am ready to work at it. I am not going to obsess over it'," Ileana D'Cruz told PTI.
In 2018, Ileana D'Cruz became the 'most sensational celebrity' on the internet, replacing Kapil Sharma. According to McAfee's Most Sensational Celebrity survey, Ileana D'Cruz' name had been used by hackers to lure netizens to visit malicious websites. Ileana's name was followed by actors Priyanka Chopra, Deepika Padukone, Preity Zinta, Tabu, Kriti Sanon, Akshay Kumar, Rishi Kapoor, Parineeti Chopra and Govinda in the list.
Contrary to her on-screen glamourous image, Ileana D'cruz is just like any normal girl who loves shopping and picking glamorous pieces without running after brands and getting the best of bargains even if it is for grocery.
On the personal front, Ileana D'Cruz is quite a private persona. While she is not in favour of hiding facts about her personal life, but she won't talk about it publicly either.
"I am not the sort of person, who sweeps things under the rug, but I just don't like talking about it because I just feel that in a personal life, there is also another person and it's not fair to the other person," said Ileana.
However, when it came to openly disccuss about her mental health, Ileana D'Cruz did not hide things. She revealed that it was her ex-boyfriend Andrew Kneebone who egged on her to see a therapist when depression struck her. "Things had got so bad that I was pushing people away. I didn't realise how much I was alienating people. I would constantly refuse to go out when friends would call. At one point, I didn't realise I was at home for a week... After that, I got an ultimatum from him," shared Ileana.
She is calmer today. "Now I don't look at life where I'd say: 'Oh gosh, my life's over if I don't have films any more'. My approach is that there's so much more for me to do... It (depression) really was in a way godsent... That depression and that phase in my life, as horrible as it was, was needed in a way to switch things back and change who I was as a person."
Coming back to her work front, Ileana D'Cruz will be next seen in The Big Bull, which tells the story of stockbroker Harshad Mehta's life involving his financial crimes over a period 10 years, from 1980 to 1990. The movie stars Abhishek Bachchan as Mehta.
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