Jackie Shroff

Shroff was born as Jaikishan Kakubhai Shroff (or Saraf) on 1 February 1957 in Bombay (present Mumbai), Bombay State, India. His father, Kakubhai Haribhai Shroff, was a Gujarati. His mother was a Turkmen who fled the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic (present-day Kazakhstan) during a coup, according to Shroff. His maternal grandmother escaped to Ladakh, along with her seven daughters, and migrated to Delhi, finally reaching Mumbai.

Shroff's father came from a family of merchants and traders. However, they lost all of their money in the stock market and his father had to leave home at the age of 17. His father met his mother when both were teenagers and got married.

Shroff dropped out of junior college after finishing his 11th class. He was raised in the Teen batti locality of Mumbai. In his childhood, he fought many street fights for his friends and often got beat up. His father Kakubhai was an astrologer.

As a youngster, he modelled in a few advertisements including Savage perfumes. It was one of his classmates in school who gave Shroff his name "Jackie" and then filmmaker Subhash Ghai stuck to this name when he launched him in the film Hero. Shroff regularly revisits his childhood home in Teen Batti.