Hema Malini

Malini was born in a Tamil Iyengar Brahmin family to Jaya Lakshmi and VSR Chakravarti Iyengar in Ammankudi, Madras Province (now Tamil Nadu). She attended the Andhra Mahila Sabha in Chennai, where her favourite subject was history. She studied at DTEA Mandir Marg until the 11th Standard, after which she pursued her acting career.

Her first film with Dharmendra was Tum Haseen Main Jawaan (1970). They later married in 1980. Dharmendra already had two sons and two daughters with his first wife Prakash Kaur, two of whom later became Bollywood actors – Sunny Deol and Bobby Deol. Malini and Dharmendra have two children, Esha Deol (born 1981) and Ahana Deol Vohra (born 1985).

Madhoo, who played the female lead in Phool Aur Kaante, Roja and Annayya, is Malini's niece.

On 11 June 2015, Malini became a grandmother when her younger daughter, Ahana Deol Vohra , gave birth to her first child, Darien Vohra and twin girls Astraia and Adea Vohra were born on 26 November 2020. On 19 October 2017, her elder daughter, Esha Deol , gave birth to a girl, Radhya Takhtani and another baby girl Miraya Takhtani on 10 June 2019. Businessman Vaibhav Vohra is her son-in-law and Bharat Takhtani is her ex-son-in-law. In 1999, Malini campaigned for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate, Vinod Khanna, a former Bollywood actor, in the Lok Sabha Elections in Gurdaspur, Punjab. In February 2004, Malini officially joined the BJP. From 2003 to 2009, she served as an MP to the upper house – the Rajya Sabha, having been nominated by the then President of India, Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. In March 2010, Malini was made general secretary of the BJP, and in February 2011, she was recommended by Ananth Kumar, the party general secretary. In the 2014 general elections for the Lok Sabha, Malini defeated the Mathura incumbent, Jayant Chaudhary (RLD) by 3,30,743 votes.

In 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Hema Malini retained her Mathura Lok Sabha seat with comfortable margin. While Hema Malini won 6,71,293 votes, her nearest rival Kunwar Narendra Singh received 3,77,822 votes, so that she won the Mathura seat by around 3 lakh votes.

In 2024 Lok Sabha elections, Malini won Mathura Lok Sabha constituency by a huge margin against Congress candidate Mukesh Dhanger, making it a hat-trick from Mathura.