Mahira Khan

Mahira Khan was born on 21 December 1988 into a Pashtun family in Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan. In an online interview with Reham Khan, she said that her parents are Urdu-speaking Pathans. Her father, Hafeez Khan, was born in Delhi during the British Raj, and migrated to Pakistan after the partition of India. She has a younger brother, Hasan Khan, a journalist and entrepreneur. Among schools, she attended the Foundation Public School, from where she completed her A'Level. After graduating from Foundation, she, at the age of seventeen, moved to California, United States, for higher education, where she attended the Santa Monica College. Khan was the first women in her family to go out of the country alone. Though, she later admitted that living in the United States on her own helped her become "strong and independent." Khan then enrolled herself at the University of Southern California for a Master's degree in English literature; during this period, she worked as a part-time cashier at Rite Aid. She described the experience: "I used to mop floors, clean floors, run the till and shut the store at night." However, after completing her first year, Khan decided to pursue her interest to become an actress, and quit her university education and returned to Pakistan. While living in the United States, her friend Ali Askari, introduced her to a reality show director, who selected her for the show Most Wanted, that aired on MTV in 2006. She then featured as a presenter for the Aag TV's reality show Weekends with Mahira (2008). The show proved to be a major hit and became immensely popular among the audience. Her appearance in the show attracted the attention of filmmaker Shoaib Mansoor, who remembered her, and later offered her a role in his film Bol (2011), which she accepted.