Priyanka Chopra
Priyanka Chopra Jonas is an Indian actress and producer. The winner of the Miss World 2000 pageant, she is India's highest-paid actress and her accolades include two National Film Awards and five Filmfare Awards. In 2016, the Government of India honoured her with the Padma Shri, and Time named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Forbes listed her among the World's 100 Most Powerful Women, and in 2022, she was named in the BBC 100 Women list.
Chopra accepted offers to join the Indian film industry following her pageant wins. Her acting debut came in the Tamil film Thamizhan, followed by her first Bollywood feature in The Hero: Love Story of a Spy. She played the leading lady in the box-office hits Andaaz and Mujhse Shaadi Karogi and had her breakout role in the 2004 romantic thriller Aitraaz. Chopra established herself with starring roles in the top-grossing productions Krrish and Don, and later reprised her role in their successful sequels Krrish 3 and Don 2. For playing a troubled model in the drama Fashion, Chopra won a National Film Award and a Filmfare Award for Best Actress. Chopra gained further praise for portraying a range of characters in the films Kaminey, 7 Khoon Maaf, Barfi!, Mary Kom, Dil Dhadakne Do, and Bajirao Mastani.
From 2015 to 2018, Chopra starred as Alex Parrish in the ABC thriller series Quantico, becoming the first South Asian to headline an American network drama series. Founding the production company Purple Pebble Pictures in 2015, she produced several films under it, including the Marathi films Ventilator and Paani, and the self-starring Hindi biopic The Sky Is Pink. Chopra has also appeared in Hollywood films, such as Baywatch, Isn't It Romantic, The White Tiger, and The Matrix Resurrections, and starred in the action thriller series Citadel.
Chopra ventured into music by releasing three singles and into writing with her memoir Unfinished, which reached The New York Times Best Seller list. Her other ventures include tech investments, a haircare brand, a restaurant, and a homeware line. She promotes social causes such as environment and women's rights and is vocal about gender equality, the gender pay gap, and feminism. She has worked with UNICEF since 2006 and was appointed as the national and global UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador for child rights in 2010 and 2016, respectively. Her namesake foundation for health and education works towards providing support to underprivileged Indian children. Chopra has walked the Met Gala red carpet in Manhattan five times as of 2025. Despite maintaining privacy, Chopra's off-screen life, including her marriage to American singer and actor Nick Jonas, is the subject of substantial media coverage.
Early life
Chopra was born on 18 July 1982 in Jamshedpur, Bihar, to Ashok and Madhu Chopra, both physicians in the Indian Army. Her father was a Punjabi Hindu from Ambala. Her mother is a Magahi Hindu from Jharkhand and is the eldest daughter of Dr. Manohar Kishan Akhouri, a former Congress veteran, and Madhu Jyotsna Akhouri, a former member of Bihar Legislative Assembly. Chopra's maternal grandmother, Mrs. Akhouri, was a Malayali Jacobite Syrian Christian originally named Mary John, from Kumarakom, Kerala. Chopra has a brother, Siddharth, who is seven years younger. Film actresses Parineeti Chopra, Meera Chopra and Mannara Chopra are her cousins and Neelam Upadhyaya is her sister-in-law.Owing to Chopra's parents' professions as military physicians, the family was posted in a number of places in India, including Delhi, Chandigarh, Ambala, Ladakh, Lucknow, Bareilly, and Pune. Among the schools she attended were La Martiniere Girls' School in Lucknow and St. Maria Goretti College in Bareilly. In an interview published in Daily News and Analysis, Chopra said that she did not mind travelling regularly and changing schools; she welcomed it as a new experience and a way to discover India's multicultural society. Among the many places that she lived, Chopra has fond memories as a child of playing in the valleys of Leh, in the cold northwestern Indian desert region of Ladakh. She had said: "I think I was in Class 4 when I was in Leh. My brother was just born. My dad was in the army and was posted there. I stayed in Leh for a year, and my memories of that place are tremendous. We were all army kids there. We weren't living in houses, we were in bunkers in the valley and there was a stupa right on top of a hill which used to overlook our valley. We used to race up to the top of the stupa". She now considers Bareilly her home town, and maintains strong connections there.
At 13, Chopra moved to the United States to study, living with her aunt, and attending schools in Newton, Massachusetts, and Cedar Rapids, Iowa, after a stop in Queens, New York, as her aunt's family also moved frequently. While in Massachusetts, she participated in several theatre productions, and studied Western classical music, and choral singing. During her teenage years in the United States, Chopra sometimes faced racial issues and was bullied for being Indian by an African-American classmate. She has said: "I was a gawky kid, had low self-esteem, came from a modest middle-class background, had white marks on my legs. But I was damn hard working. Today, my legs sell 12 brands." After three years, Chopra returned to India, finishing the senior year of her high-school education at the Army Public School in Bareilly.
During this period, Chopra won the local May Queen beauty pageant, after which she was pursued by admirers; her family equipped their home with bars for her protection. Her mother entered her in the Femina Miss India contest of 2000; she finished second, winning the Femina Miss India World title. Chopra next won the Miss World pageant, where she was crowned Miss World 2000 and Miss World Continental Queen of BeautyAsia & Oceania at the Millennium Dome in London on 30 November 2000. Chopra was the fifth Indian contestant to win Miss World, and the fourth to do so within seven years. She had enrolled in college, but left after winning the Miss World pageant. Chopra said that the Miss India and Miss World titles brought her recognition, and she began receiving offers for film roles. In 2001, the bridge of Chopra's nose collapsed during nasal surgery to remove a polyp. She fell into depression over her "completely different" appearance, but was satisfied with the results of corrective surgeries.
Acting career
Career beginnings and breakthrough (2002–2004)
After winning Miss India World, Chopra was cast as the female lead in Abbas–Mustan's romantic thriller Humraaz, in which she was to make her film debut. However, this fell through for various reasons: she stated the production conflicted with her schedule, while the producers said they recast because Chopra took on various other commitments. Her screen debut occurred in the 2002 Tamil film Thamizhan as the love interest of the protagonist, played by Vijay. A review published in The Hindu was appreciative of the film for its wit and dialogue; however it felt that Chopra's role was limited from an acting viewpoint.In 2003, Chopra made her Bollywood film debut as the second female lead opposite Sunny Deol and Preity Zinta in Anil Sharma's The Hero: Love Story of a Spy. Set against the backdrop of the Indian Army in Kashmir, the film tells the story of an RAW agent's fight against terrorism. She later recounted her experience, admitting she was very nervous and "shaking" when she first met Deol. Despite rumors that she was not a good actress and discussions about possibly removing her from the film, Deol recognized her potential and insisted on giving her a chance to prove herself. The Hero emerged as one of the highest-grossing Bollywood films that year, but received mixed reviews from critics. Derek Elley from Variety said that "mega-looker Chopra makes a solid screen debut." Later that year, she appeared in Raj Kanwar's box-office success Andaaz with Akshay Kumar, sharing the female lead with debutante Lara Dutta. Chopra played a vivacious young woman who falls in love with Kumar's character. The Hindustan Times noted the glamour that she brought to the role; Kunal Shah of Sify praised her performance and stated she had "all the qualities to be a star." Her performance earned her the Filmfare Award for Best Female Debut and a Best Supporting Actress nomination.
Chopra's first three releases in 2004—Plan, Kismat, and Asambhav—performed poorly at the box office. Chopra was typically cast during this earlier period as a "glamour quotient", in roles that were considered forgettable by film critic Joginder Tuteja. Later that year, she starred with Salman Khan and Akshay Kumar in David Dhawan's romantic comedy Mujhse Shaadi Karogi, which opened to commercial success and emerged the third-highest-grossing film of the year in India.
In late 2004, she starred opposite Kumar and Kareena Kapoor in Abbas–Mustan's romantic thriller Aitraaz. Chopra considers her first role as an antagonist, portraying Soniya Roy, an ambitious woman who accuses her employee of sexual harassment, as the "biggest learning experience of her career". The film was a critical and commercial success, and Chopra's performance received critical acclaim. The Hindustan Times cited it as the film that changed her career significantly. A reviewer writing for the BBC said: "Aitraaz is Chopra's film. As the deliciously wicked, gold digging, scheming seductress, she chews up every scene she is in with her magnetic screen presence." She won a Filmfare Award for Best Performance in a Negative Role, becoming the second and final actress to win the award after Kajol. Chopra also received a nomination for the Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actress, and the Producers Guild Film Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role.