Kangna Amardeep Ranaut, known as Kangana Ranaut, was born on 23 March 1986 in Bhambla (now Surajpur), a small town in Himachal Pradesh’s Mandi district. She is an actress, filmmaker and politician, and has been the Member of Parliament for Mandi in the Lok Sabha since June 2024. She has won four National Film Awards and four Filmfare Awards, has featured six times in Forbes India’s Celebrity 100 list, and was honoured with the Padma Shri in 2020.
She was born into a Rajput family. Her mother, Asha, is a school teacher, and her father, Amardeep, is a businessman. Her elder sister, Rangoli Chandel, works as her manager, and she has a younger brother, Akshat. Her great-grandfather, Sarju Singh Ranaut, was a member of the legislative assembly, and her grandfather was an IAS officer. She grew up in a joint family at their ancestral haveli and has described her childhood as “simple and happy” and herself as “stubborn and rebellious”.
She studied science at the DAV School in Chandigarh and was expected to become a doctor. After failing a chemistry unit test in her twelfth year, she reconsidered, skipped the All India Pre Medical Test and moved to Delhi at 16. A modelling agency took her on, but she disliked the work, and she trained in acting under the theatre director Arvind Gaur with the Asmita Theatre Group. After a successful performance in which she played two parts in one of Gaur’s plays, she moved to Mumbai and enrolled in a four-month acting course. Her relatives were unhappy with her choice, and she has said she lived on bread and pickle during the lean period.
Her film debut was the thriller Gangster (2006), which won her the Filmfare Award for Best Female Debut. She was praised for the dramas Woh Lamhe (2006), Life in a… Metro (2007) and Fashion (2008), the last of which won her the National Film Award for Best Supporting Actress. After commercial successes such as Raaz: The Mystery Continues (2009) and Once Upon a Time in Mumbaai (2010), she was criticised for being typecast, and Tanu Weds Manu (2011) was well received.
Her prospects improved in 2013, when she played a mutant in Krrish 3. She then won two consecutive National Film Awards for Best Actress, for Queen (2014), in which she played an abandoned bride, and for the dual role in Tanu Weds Manu Returns (2015), which was the biggest-earning female-led Hindi film at the time. She co-directed the epic action film Manikarnika: The Queen of Jhansi (2019), and her performance in it and as a sportswoman in Panga (2020) together won a fourth National Film Award.
In 2020 she launched the production company Manikarnika Films. She directed and starred as Indira Gandhi in the biographical drama Emergency (2025), which was poorly received. She is outspoken on social media and in interviews, and the opinions she has voiced, which align with right-wing ideologies and support for the Bharatiya Janata Party, together with disputes in her personal and professional relationships, have sparked controversy, as Wikipedia notes.
She was elected to the Lok Sabha from Mandi in the 2024 general election, which brought her career in cinema together with a new political role in her home district.
Featured image: Kangana Ranaut (file photo). Photo by Rohit2301, licensed under CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.
