Vidya Balan - Early Life and Background

Early Life and Background

Vidya Balan was born on 1 January 1978 in Ottapalam, a town in the Palakkad District of Kerala, to P. R. Balan, currently the Vice President of ETC India, and Saraswathy Balan, a homemaker. According to Balan, they speak a mix of Tamil and Malayalam at home; she is also well versed in Hindi, Marathi, English and Bengali. Her elder sister, Priya Balan, works in the field of advertising.

Balan grew up in the suburban neighbourhood of Chembur, Mumbai and was schooled at St. Anthony Girls' High School. Balan aspired to make a career in film from a young age and was inspired by the work of actors Shabana Azmi and Madhuri Dixit. At the age of sixteen, Balan starred in the first season of Ekta Kapoor's sitcom Hum Paanch, as Radhika, a bespectacled teenager. Following the success of the show, Balan refused Anurag Basu's offer to star as the lead of a television soap opera, as she wanted to concentrate on making a film career. Her parents were supportive of her decision to become an actress, but encouraged her to complete her education first. She thus attended St. Xavier's College to pursue a bachelor's degree in sociology and later earned a master's degree from the University of Mumbai.

Read more about this topic:  Vidya Balan

Famous quotes containing the words early life, early, life and/or background:

    ... business training in early life should not be regarded solely as insurance against destitution in the case of an emergency. For from business experience women can gain, too, knowledge of the world and of human beings, which should be of immeasurable value to their marriage careers. Self-discipline, co-operation, adaptability, efficiency, economic management,—if she learns these in her business life she is liable for many less heartbreaks and disappointments in her married life.
    Hortense Odlum (1892–?)

    I looked at my daughters, and my boyhood picture, and appreciated the gift of parenthood, at that moment, more than any other gift I have ever been given. For what person, except one’s own children, would want so deeply and sincerely to have shared your childhood? Who else would think your insignificant and petty life so precious in the living, so rich in its expressiveness, that it would be worth partaking of what you were, to understand what you are?
    —Gerald Early (20th century)

    Everything one does in life, even love, occurs in an express train racing toward death. To smoke opium is to get out of the train while it is still moving. It is to concern oneself with something other than life or death.
    Jean Cocteau (1889–1963)

    Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.
    Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)