14 Facts About Leela Chitnis

Leela Chitnis was an Indian actress in the Indian film industry, active from the 1930s to the 1980s.

Leela Chitnis was born in a Marathi-speaking Brahmin family, in Dharwad, Karnataka.

Leela Chitnis started as an extra and went on to stunt films.

In Gentleman Daku in 1937, Leela Chitnis played a polished crook dressed in male apparel and was publicised in the Times of India as the first graduate society-lady from Maharashtra.

Leela Chitnis worked at Prabhat Pictures, Pune and Ranjit Movietone before going on to be the leading lady in Bombay Talkies.

Leela Chitnis's love stands up to his father's prejudices, an unusual theme for the time, but one that appealed to the public imagination enough to ensure it success at the box office.

Leela Chitnis accepted the reality and in 1948 entered the next, and perhaps most renowned, phase of her career in Shaheed.

For 22 years, Leela Chitnis played the mother of the later leading men including Dilip Kumar, often playing an ailing mother or a mother going through hardships and struggling to bring up her offspring.

Leela Chitnis was busy through the 1970s, but cut down her appearances thereafter before taking the final curtain call in Dil Tujhko Diya in 1985.

Leela Chitnis then emigrated to the United States in the late 1980s to join her children.

Leela Chitnis died in Danbury, Connecticut at a nursing home, at the age of 94.

Leela Chitnis briefly dabbled in movie-making, producing Kisise Na Kehna and directing Aaj ki Baat.

Leela Chitnis wrote and directed a stage adaptation of Somerset Maugham's Sacred Flame and published her autobiography, Chanderi Duniyet, in 1981.

Leela Chitnis lived with her eldest son in Connecticut in United States, until her death.