Waheeda Rehman

Biography:

Waheeda Rehman is an Indian actress who was born on 3rd February 1938 to a Tamil Deccani Muslim family in Chengalpet of present-day Tamil Nadu, India. s a child, she and her sisters were trained Bharatanatyam in Chennai. Rehman’s dream was to become a doctor, but due to her family’s circumstances emotionally and financially, alongside her mother’s illness, she abandoned her goal.
She is one of Hindi cinema’s most accomplished actresses, she has worked in more than 90 feature films, in a career spanning over five decades.
Rehman’s performances caught the eye of Hindi filmmaker Guru Dutt, whom she considered her mentor. Dutt brought her to Bombay (present-day Mumbai) and cast her as Kamini in the crime thriller C.I.D. (1956).
Because of the trend set of the then popular actresses such as Madhubala, Nargis and Meena Kumari, Waheeda was asked to use a stage name, reasoning that her name should be “something sexy”, which she refused and continued with her birth name. Dutt would next cast her in her first lead role in Hindi films in the drama Pyaasa (1957), where she portrayed a prostitute. The film was a commercial success, and it has been regarded by critics as one of the greatest films ever made.
Rehman is regarded as one of the greatest actors of Indian cinema. One of the highest paid actress of mid- to late 1960s and early 1970s, Rehman appeared in Box Office India’s “Top Actresses” list in 1967 and 1968