Biography

Ileana D'Cruz (born 1 November 1986) is an Indian actress and model who works predominantly in Telugu and Hindi cinema, as well as Tamil films. She began her career through print modeling and television commercials before moving into acting. She made her acting debut in Y. V. S. Chowdary's Telugu romantic action drama *Devadasu* (2006), for which she won the Filmfare Award for Best Female Debut – South. She made her Tamil debut in *Kedi* (2006) and later appeared in *Pokiri* (2006), *Rakhi* (2006), *Munna* (2007), *Aata* (2007), Trivikram Srinivas's *Jalsa* (2008), *Kick* (2009), and Shankar's Tamil film *Nanban* (2012). She also reunited with Trivikram Srinivas for the romantic action film *Julayi* (2012). Her Hindi debut came with Anurag Basu's romantic comedy-drama *Barfi!* (2012), in which she played Shruti Ghosh and received the Filmfare Award for Best Female Debut and a nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Her later Hindi films include Rajkumar Santoshi's *Phata Poster Nikhla Hero* (2013), David Dhawan's *Main Tera Hero* (2014), Dharmendra Suresh Desai's crime thriller *Rustom* (2016), Anees Bazmee's *Mubarakan* (2017), Raj Kumar Gupta's *Raid* (2018), and Kookie Gulati's financial thriller *The Big Bull* (2021). She returned to Telugu cinema with Sreenu Vaitla's *Amar Akbar Anthony* (2018) and later appeared in the social comedy *Unfair & Lovely* (2024) and Shirsha Guha Thakurta's romantic comedy-drama *Do Aur Do Pyaar* (2024).