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P.Ramakrishnan

Iconic Indian actress Madhuri Dixit steps sure-footedly into her mid fifties – she celebrated her 53rd birthday on May 15 – with no signs of slowing down in the notoriously sexist and ageist Bollywood industry.
Here's a look at the ultimate dancing – and smiling – diva.




















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A post shared by Madhuri Dixit (@madhuridixitnene) on Sep 24, 2019 at 9:33am PDT



From humble beginnings to a booming career


After an audition and screen test, 17-year-old Madhuri Dixit entered Bollywood with a box-office flop, the hardly seen Abodh (Innocent) released in the summer of 1984. For years, she played the second lead starlet to a handful of other actresses for years. She had barely-there roles in nearly a dozen movies and was so low on the pecking order of actors listed in a film that the first chapter of her historic Hindi film career is remarkable for its paucity of proper roles.




















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A post shared by Madhuri Dixit (@madhuridixitnene) on Jan 14, 2020 at 6:44am PST



At the end of the 1980s, her career was put to the acid test in the 1988 film Tezaab (Acid) where the alchemy between choreographer Saroj Khan and dancer Madhuri Dixit produced box office gold. The film, and more importantly a seven-minute song and dance sequence shot over a period of a week, catapulted Dixit from ingénue to movie star.
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She joked that she became an “overnight sensation” except for the fact she’d been working in the industry for half a decade. The most iconic dance from that film currently has more than 97 million views and counting – a song released 31 years ago which still beats most contemporary tunes by a mile.
Equal pay and top billing?




















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A post shared by Madhuri Dixit & Rekha Fanpage (@madhurixrekha) on May 9, 2020 at 9:04am PDT



A series of hits (and flops) followed with ever-bigger roles and higher billing. Unverified legend has it that in several films in the late 90s, while her contemporaries struggled to earn pay equal to the men in the movies, Dixit was not only given top billing, but took a hefty pay packet home too.
Decades later, on a talk show, Dixit was asked if she was in fact given a higher acting fee than her co-stars, particularly in films such as Hum Aapke Hain Kaun (1994), Raja (1995) and Mrityudand (1997). She politely laughed the question off and said, “I have no idea what the other actors or my co-stars got, but if people think I got more, so be it!”
Is there a doctor in the house?




















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A post shared by Madhuri Dixit (@madhuridixitnene) on Jan 21, 2020 at 3:55am PST



With two sisters and her brother settled in the US, Dixit flew there annually to see her family and, inevitably, every year Bollywood tabloids wrote that she had either been engaged to, had arranged nuptials with, or had a love marriage to a doctor in America. Every year, she laughed off the rumours, showing off her manicured hands with no engagement ring. Until she didn’t.
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During the peak of her career, she married cardiothoracic surgeon Dr Shriram Nene in 1999 – and not a single image was leaked to the press nor did a national newspaper pick up the story until months later, when she herself announced her marital status.
In the fall of 1999, she hosted a reception in Mumbai where she invited the entire film industry to meet her life partner. The nation was intrigued about the man who had won the Bollywood queen’s heart, and how she left plum roles to settle down at the age of 32 with a man who had never seen any of her 68 films.
Household name to housewife




















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A post shared by Dr Shriram Nene (@drneneofficial) on Apr 1, 2020 at 4:19am PDT



The most intriguing chapter of Madhuri Dixit Nene’s life is the phase where she left India and settled in Denver, Colorado. She gave up films, fame, her entourage, her staff, left her family in Mumbai (she lived with her parents until she married as was the norm in her traditional Maharashtrian household) and settled down as a housewife.
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Many of her neighbours had no idea about her vast fame in the subcontinent and were baffled with the reaction of Indian residents when they caught sight of Mrs Nene grocery shopping, at a barbecue or mountain biking. To exchange fame, particularly in a nation that deifies its celebrities, for household chores and the simple life is so unique that a sitcom based on her married life is in the works – co-produced by none other than Priyanka Chopra Jonas for the ABC network in the US.
Non-stop actor and activist




















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A post shared by Madhuri Dixit (@madhuridixitnene) on Oct 20, 2019 at 4:38am PDT



Currently, Madhuri Dixit is an advertiser’s delight as she plugs several household and beauty products in India. Post-motherhood, she has worked with Unicef since 2014 to advocate the rights of children and prevent child labour, and she’s appeared in a film every year since she moved back to Mumbai to care for her ailing parents. The box office reactions have been mixed but she’s almost always received stellar critical reviews – including 17 best actress nominations at the Indian equivalent of the Oscars so far.




















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A post shared by Madhuri Dixit (@madhuridixitnene) on Sep 26, 2019 at 9:34am PDT



With more avenues for revenue, she’s one of the highest paid celebrity judges on reality TV shows, she does stage performances regularly around the world, and is the co-founder of the production company RnM Moving Pictures. She’s signed a deal with Netflix to star in a show on the platform and of course, India’s most famous dancer is paying it forward – she teaches dances online.
Watch her incredible, dizzying 36 non-stop Kathak spins.


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Madhuri Dixit was one of the most successful actresses in Indian cinema, but traded it all for marriage and motherhood – now her story is set to be brought to the masses, with a dash of comedic flair, for ABC


Madhuri Dixit was one of the most successful actresses in Indian cinema, but traded it all for marriage and motherhood – now her story is set to be brought to the masses with an ABC sitcom
