Sadhana

Sadhana (born 1941 in Karachi, Sind, British India) is an Indian Bollywood actress. Her family moved from Karachi during Partition in 1947. Her cousin was actor Hari Shivdasani (father of later actress Babita).

Start of career

Hari helped Sadhana enter films. She was a chorus girl in Raj Kapoor's Shree 420 in 1955. She played a second lead in a Sindhi film called Abana, which got her noticed and entry to an acting school. The school was run by Sashadhar Mukherjee which also had another aspiring actress called Asha Parekh. Sashadhar was involved in film making and Producer Director Nasir Hussain was given the choice of Sadhana and Asha Parekh, he picked Asha Parekh.
For Sashadhar's film Raj Kapoor's asst and aspiring director R.K Nayyar chose Sadhana and made the hit film Love in Simla in 1960 with Sashdhar's son Joy Mukherjee in the lead. R.K Nayyar and Sadhana fell in love during the making of the film.

Personel life

She lost her husband after two decades of marriage, and had miscarriages. She now lives alone and does not like to be photographed. However, in 2006, Asha Parekh revealed that she, Sadhana and other 1960's stars get together for lunch to ease the loneliness and enjoy each other's company.


Film career

R.K asked Sadhana to keep a fringe (like Audrey Hepburn) and this later became a craze and is still referred to as the Sadhana cut in India. Her film Mere Mehboob with Rajendra Kumar was one that helped make her career and is said to have some of the most beautiful closeups in early technicolor. However, it was Raj Khosla's "Woh Kaun Thi?" (1964) which really became a landmark in her career and gave her the image of the "mystery girl," where her spellbinding performance kept everyone guessing to the very end. The film became a huge hit and earned her first Filmfare nomination as Best Actress. Khosla was so enthralled with her performance that he would cast her in two more big-budget mystery films, Mera Saaya (1965) and "Anita" (1967). She would earn her second Filmfare nomination as Best Actress for the blockbuster Waqt (1965), where she also set a fashion trend with her tight churidar kurta's. She married R.K Nayyar in 1966. Then a thyroid problem affected her eyes, marring her looks and films dried up, she got treated but could never recover her looks, delivering only three hits with Inteqaam (1969), Ek Phool Do Mali (1969) and Geeta Mera Naam (1974), which she also directed. After "Geeta Mera Naam" (1974), she stopped acting saying that she wanted her fans to remember as a young, beautiful leading lady.

Filmogarphy