Ananya Panday

Panday was born on 30 October 1998 to actor Chunky Panday and costume designer Bhavana Pandey in Mumbai, Maharashtra. She has a younger sister named Rysa. Her grandfather Sharad Panday, was an Indian heart surgeon. Her uncle Chikki Panday is a businessperson and her aunt Deanne Pandey is a wellness coach. She has described her childhood as "very privileged and cushioned", and has said that she aspired to be an actress from a young age. Pandey studied at Dhirubhai Ambani International School until 2017. She participated in Vanity Fair's Le Bal des débutantes event in Paris in 2017. When asked if she missed out on higher education, Panday described film sets as her film school. Panday made her acting debut in 2019 with the teen film Student of the Year 2, co-starring Tiger Shroff and Tara Sutaria, which was produced by Karan Johar's studio Dharma Productions. Writing for Scroll.in, Nandini Ramnath felt that Panday showed potential in an unremarkable film. The film did not perform well at the box-office. Panday next starred in Pati Patni Aur Woh (2019), a remake of the 1978 film of the same name, alongside Kartik Aaryan and Bhumi Pednekar. She played a secretary who indulges in an affair with a married man, which was portrayed by Ranjeeta Kaur in the original. India Today mentioned that Panday is "bland and boring with no spice." With a worldwide gross of ₹1.15 billion (US$14 million), it emerged as a commercial success. Panday won the Filmfare Award for Best Female Debut for her performance in both Student of the Year 2 and Pati Patni Aur Woh. In 2020, Panday appeared in the action film Khaali Peeli, starring Ishaan Khatter. The film was released digitally on Zee Plex. She next appeared alongside Deepika Padukone, Siddhant Chaturvedi and Dhairya Karwa in the 2022 romantic drama Gehraiyaan, which released on Amazon Prime Video. Her performance was well-received, with Anna M. M. Vetticad from Firstpost writing, "The surprise in this ensemble is Panday who brings a gravitas to Tia's confusion and innocence that makes you wonder why she chose to debut with the hollow gloss of Student of the Year 2". Her final release of the year came with Vijay Deverakonda in Puri Jagannadh's action film Liger, a bilingual production in Hindi and Telugu. The film was a critical and commercial failure, with Panday's performance being panned. In the spiritual sequel Dream Girl 2 (2023), Panday played the brief role of the love interest of Ayushmann Khurrana's character. The Times of India's Dhaval Roy dismissed her role and accent. It emerged as one of the year's highest-grossing Hindi films and became Panday's first to cross ₹1 billion (US$12 million) at the domestic box-office. Panday then starred in Kho Gaye Hum Kahan, a coming-of-age drama about the negative effects of social media, alongside Chaturvedi and Adarsh Gourav. Saibal Chatterjee of NDTV wrote that she "does a fair enough job of a character stuck in a single-note loop", while Scroll.in's Udita Jhunjhunwala found her "highly convincing as the jilted obsessive stalker seeking social media validation". The Indian Express evaluated that her urban roles in Gehraiyaan and Kho Gaye Hum Kahan suited the actress better than the ones she performed in commercial cinema such as Dream Girl 2. In September 2024, Panday portrayed an ostracised fashion influencer in the Amazon Prime Video comedy series Call Me Bae, produced by Johar. She expressed how her foray into the comedic genre was "challenging", and emphasised the difficulty in having to headline a project rather than play a "reacting" role to the lead star. The series had a mixed reception from critics, but her performance was better received. Sukanya Verma of Rediff.com praised her comic timing in a role that mirrored the actress' own privilege. The Hindu's Shilajit Mitra analysed that her privileged characters in Gehraiyaan, Kho Gaye Hum Kahan and Call Me Bae were all "in her proximate wheelhouse". The following month, Panday starred in Vikramaditya Motwane's screenlife thriller CTRL for Netflix, which is about an influencer targeted by a malicious AI app. Nandini Ramnath of Scroll.in believed that after Kho Gaye Hum Kahan, she was once again "wholly convincing" as a Gen Z woman negatively affected by technology. Acknowledging it as her third consecutive urban-set, social media-centred project, Panday has expressed a desire for further career progression and to return to more commercial cinema. Panday will continue her collaborations with Dharma Productions with the biopic Shankara, starring Akshay Kumar as C. Sankaran Nair.