Shakeela

Shakeela was born in Chennai into Urdu and Telugu speaking Muslim family. Her mother was from Nellore in Andhra Pradesh. She could not complete her school leaving certificate examination, eventually making her foray into films.From the beginning of her career, she acted in B movies and softcore pornography. One of her big hits was the 2001 Malayalam film Kinnarathumbikal, which brought her into limelight. Kinnarathumbikal was dubbed in more than six Indian languages and was a major commercial success, grossing ₹4 crore at the box office against a budget of ₹12 lakhs. She did a few controversial topless scenes in her initial movies until she got noticed. Her B movies were dubbed and released in almost all Indian languages. Her films were dubbed into foreign languages like Nepalese, Chinese, and Sinhala. After she acted in several movies, the soft-porn movies in India were colloquially called as "shakeela films". Shakeela hired a body double Surayya Banu to do her topless scenes. Shakeela started appearing in family character roles in Tamil, Telugu and Kannada language movies since 2003. She wrote her autobiography in Malayalam, which covered her family, her background, as well as her acquaintance with notable film personalities, politicians and childhood friends. In January 2018, she announced her 250th film as an actor, Sheelavathi, would begin production.