Mahima Chaudhry, a Bollywood actress and model, was born on September 13, 1973, in Darjeeling, West Bengal. Winner of a local beauty pageant, Mahima appeared in television ads and was a VJ on a music channel when she was seen by director Subhash Ghai. She made her debut playing a simple village girl forced to marry an NRI in Ghai’s ‘Pardes’ (1997) opposite Shah Rukh Khan. Mahima won a Filmfare Best Debut Award for this movie. Since then, she has appeared in thirty + films, such as: “Dil Kya Kare’ (1999), ‘Dhadkan’ (2000), ‘Khiladi 420’ (2000), ‘Lajja’ (2001), and ‘Zameer: The Fire Within’ (2005). Mahima married in 2006 to businessman Bobby Mukherji and they had one daughter.  Mahima took a break from films and returned in 2015 playing a gangster’s wife in ‘MumBhai – The Gangsters’. She followed with ‘Dark Chocolate’ (2016), a Bengali crime thriller based on a real murder case. In 1999, Mahima was in a car accident and was badly injured by glass hitting her face.