69 Facts About Shefali Shah

1.

Shefali Shah was born on Shefali Shetty on 22 May 1973 and is an Indian actress of film, television and theatre.

2.

Unwilling to compromise her artistic convictions, Shefali Shah was selective about her roles through the following decades.

3.

Shefali Shah appeared in the international co-production Monsoon Wedding and the mainstream comedy-drama Waqt: The Race Against Time.

4.

Shefali Shah's career surged in the late 2010s as she transitioned to leading roles.

5.

Shefali Shah won a Filmfare Short Film Award for her performance in Juice and followed with two Netflix projects: the romantic drama Once Again and the International Emmy Award-winning crime miniseries Delhi Crime.

6.

Shefali Shah wrote and directed two self-starring COVID-19-themed short films in 2020: Someday and Happy Birthday Mummyji, and led the segment "Ankahi" in the anthology film Ajeeb Daastaans.

7.

Shefali Shah is the only child of Mangalorean Sudhakar Shetty, a banker at Reserve Bank of India, and his Gujarati wife Shobha, a homeopathy doctor.

8.

Shefali Shah is fluent in Tulu, Hindi, English, Marathi and Gujarati.

9.

Shefali Shah played the part upon her mother's consent and would not act again until several years later.

10.

Shefali Shah was married to television actor Harsh Chhaya from 1994 to 2000.

11.

Shefali Shah trained for six months at Last Ship, an artists' residency in Bandra, and in 2016 took a course at Metafora, an art school in Barcelona, Spain.

12.

Shefali Shah cites Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock as her sources of inspiration.

13.

Shefali Shah opened a restaurant named Jalsa in Ahmedabad, Gujarat in 2021, which serves Indian and international cuisines and offers customers different cultural and recreational activities, from pottery and henna decoration to musical performances such as Garba.

14.

Shefali Shah directly supervises its cuisine, some of which is based on her home recipes, as well as decor, having designed some of its interiors, including walls hand-painted by her.

15.

Shefali Shah's acting career began with work in inter-collegiate plays in Gujarati during the early 1990s.

16.

Shefali Shah was reluctant to work in motion pictures after that, and the roles she was offered were mostly small character parts.

17.

Shefali Shah continued working in TV series, including Balaji Telefilms' Mano Ya Na Mano and Doordarshan's Aarohan and Sea Hawks.

18.

In 1997, Shefali Shah replaced Seema Kapoor in the TV series after over 120 episodes.

19.

Shefali Shah's performance earned her the Zee Woman of the Year award in 1997.

20.

Shefali Shah said she instinctively recognised her part and knew exactly how to play it.

21.

Shefali Shah played Preeti, a woman caught between her love life and career ambitions.

22.

Shailaja Bajpai of The Indian Express commended Shefali Shah's acting talent but thought she was less suitable for such a young-aged part, concluding that she is "brilliantly miscast".

23.

Shefali Shah worked again under her husband Vipul's direction in the family melodrama Waqt: The Race Against Time, playing Amitabh Bachchan's wife and Akshay Kumar's mother.

24.

Shefali Shah was considered for the part following Bachchan's suggestion against her husband's hesitation.

25.

Shefali Shah's casting in the role of a middle-aged mother to Kumar, who in reality is five years her senior, attracted considerable media coverage.

26.

Shefali Shah defended her choice of the part, saying she admired the character's traits and found particular challenge in the significant age differences.

27.

Shefali Shah followed with a role in Aparna Sen's English-language drama 15 Park Avenue.

28.

In 2007, Shefali Shah was lauded for her work in two films: Feroz Abbas Khan's biographical film Gandhi, My Father and Rituparno Ghosh's English-language film-within-a-film drama The Last Lear.

29.

Shefali Shah played his troubled and irritable caregiver and live-in partner, a role she considered her best yet, alongside Preity Zinta and Divya Dutta.

30.

The film was named Best Feature Film in English at the 55th National Film Awards, where Shefali Shah won the Best Supporting Actress award for what was cited by the jury as an "aggressive portrayal of a Bengali housewife who in time becomes more tolerant of her aging husband's many eccentric guests".

31.

Shefali Shah spoke of her acting experience on stage, recounting her full involvement with her character: "I have to literally break down every time, then collect the pieces and put them back together again".

32.

Shefali Shah played a young housewife who spends a romantic day with a criminal on the run from prison.

33.

In 2015, Shefali Shah starred in Zoya Akhtar's comedy-drama Dil Dhadakne Do alongside Anil Kapoor as her husband, and Priyanka Chopra and Ranveer Singh as her children.

34.

The story is about a wealthy, dysfunctional family who embark on a cruise to celebrate the 30th wedding anniversary of the parents; Shefali Shah played Neelam Mehra, the passive-aggressive matriarch caught in a marriage of convenience and hiding her eating disorder.

35.

Shefali Shah loved the script and the character but was initially apprehensive about accepting another part of a middle-aged woman and playing a mother to Chopra and Singh; she eventually relented on her husband's advice.

36.

Shefali Shah received her third Best Supporting Actress Filmfare nomination for the film, and was awarded the Stardust Award for Best Supporting Actress as well as a Screen Award for Best Ensemble Cast along with her co-stars in the film.

37.

In Brothers, Karan Malhotra's remake of the American sports drama Warrior, Shefali Shah had a minor supporting role.

38.

Shefali Shah voiced the character of Raksha in the Hindi version of the Disney live-action feature The Jungle Book.

39.

Shefali Shah next played the fictional part of India's Minister of Home Affairs Leena Chowdhury in the action thriller Commando 2: The Black Money Trail.

40.

In 2017, Shefali Shah acted in Juice, a short film about gender inequality in middle-class Indian families.

41.

In Once Again, an Indo-German Netflix romance film, Shefali Shah was cast in the lead as a widowed middle-aged restaurateur who falls in love with an ageing film star played by Neeraj Kabi.

42.

Shefali Shah said she had long awaited a film of the sort, describing herself as "an incurable romantic".

43.

Shefali Shah received compliments for her performance, and her chemistry with Kabi drew positive notice.

44.

Shefali Shah found the part "emotionally, physically, mentally" consuming and would often interact with Sharma throughout filming to learn more about the character.

45.

The series opened to universally positive reviews from critics, and Shefali Shah's performance met with widespread acclaim.

46.

Shefali Shah hailed the show as a turning point in her life, saying it reassured filmmakers to cast her in primary parts and heralded the busiest period of her career.

47.

In 2020, Shefali Shah experimented with writing and directing in two self-starring COVID-19-based short films, Someday and Happy Birthday Mummyji.

48.

Shefali Shah conceived the story based on memories from her mother who had turned caregiver to her grandmother, and shot the film with a five-member crew at her residence over a period of two days.

49.

Shefali Shah wrote the script drawing upon her own life experiences and believed Suchi "represents all the women you know".

50.

Shefali Shah played Natasha, an unhappily married woman who struggles with her teenaged daughter's hearing loss and falls in love with a hearing-impaired photographer, played by Manav Kaul.

51.

Shefali Shah studied sign language in preparation for the part and revealed to have grown so emotionally invested in the story that it left her heartbroken when filming ended.

52.

In 2022, Shefali Shah starred in Human, a medical streaming television series.

53.

Shefali Shah played Dr Gauri Nath, a powerful and ruthlessly ambitious neurosurgeon with a traumatic childhood who owns Manthan, a self-founded multi-specialty hospital.

54.

Shefali Shah found the negative character of Gauri to be unlike anyone she had ever known.

55.

Critics reacted positively to Shefali Shah's turn, noting her composed demeanor and hushed tone in the part.

56.

Later in the year, Shefali Shah starred opposite Vidya Balan in the social thriller Jalsa, an Amazon Prime feature film.

57.

Shefali Shah's part is that of Rukhsana, a maid whose daughter becomes the victim of a hit-and-run accident.

58.

The film opened to a positive response from critics, and Shefali Shah received rave reviews for her understated performance.

59.

Shefali Shah was named Best Actress at the annual Indian Film Festival of Melbourne.

60.

Shefali Shah's Rukhsana is that vulnerable maid from the margins who makes an attempt to hold on to a life of dignity.

61.

Shefali Shah next appeared in the medical comedy Doctor G, alongside Ayushmann Khurrana and Rakul Preet Singh, for which she was nominated for the Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actress.

62.

Shefali Shah has been described by critics and the media as one of India's finest actresses.

63.

Shefali Shah explains that cinema being a powerful visual medium which captures actors' faces, sometimes not much spoken text is required and is often redundant.

64.

Highly selective about her roles and unwilling to compromise her artistic integrity, Shefali Shah chooses parts by instinct and maintains that unless completely consumed by a project, she will not commit to it.

65.

Shefali Shah admitted that Hasratein had damaged her career in this regard.

66.

Shefali Shah explained her choice of Gandhi, My Father was different as she played Kasturba Gandhi from the character's early adulthood into her later years.

67.

Shefali Shah was one of the leading actresses of Indian television before she left it as she was dissatisfied with the content.

68.

The reception to Shefali Shah's performances has been positive from her initial television work.

69.

Shefali Shah believes her middle-class background has helped her shape a personality which makes her characters relatable.