Kalki Koechlin Actress Biography

Kalki Koechlin Actress Biography

Koechlin played a supporting role in the black comedy The Film Emotional Atyachar, her only film appearance of 2010. Co-starring Ranvir Shorey, Mohit Ahlawat, Abhimanyu Singh, Vinay Pathak, and Ravi Kishan, the production opened to mixed reviews. Her performance as Sophie, a manipulative woman who is abducted by two corrupt policemen, garnered mixed reviews from critics. Komal Nahta of Koimoi labeled her performance as average, while Blessyy Chettiar of Daily News and Analysis felt that she was underused. Koechlin had committed to star in I am Afia, one of the four short films of Onir’s anthology I Am, but it went into production with a modified plot for the segment. In an interview with The Telegraph Onir said, “as we discussed the subject more and more, both Kalki and me felt that the narrative was becoming too hurried in the 25-minute limit”. Koechlin, who was to play the role of an NGO worker in the film was ultimately replaced by Nandita Das, after the change of plot.

Kalki Koechlin (/ˈkʌlki keɪˈklæ̃/ (listen); born 10 January 1982) is a French-Indian actress and writer. Known for her unconventional body of work in the Hindi film industry, she is the recipient of such accolades as a National Film Award, a Filmfare Award, and two Screen Awards. Although a French citizen, she has lived most of her life in India.

Koechlin began writing poetry during her childhood and has variously performed and recorded self-written poems. A patron of socially relevant poetry, she performed a solo theatrical monologue entitled, Wo-Manologue at a December 2016 event organised by the FICCI Ladies Organisation. She has also sporadically recited An Intense Piece about the Truths of Womanhood, a soliloquy, on such events as the International Women’s Day special at the India Today Conclave in March 2014 and the 2016 Kalyani Nagar meeting of the FICCI Ladies Organisation. She recited three separate poems focusing on consumerism, the contemporary society, and a comic nursery rhyme at “Spotlight”, a poetry slam in Mumbai. Koechlin was a member of the jury at the 2016 National Youth Poetry Slam, held in Bangalore.

Koechlin began working on a podcast for BBC in 2018. Entitled “My Indian Life”, the series had its debut on the streaming networks on 4 August.

Koechlin starred in a 2016 video, entitled Printing Machine that talked about the approach of media and society towards crimes against women, as a part of Culture Machine’s video series “Unblushed”. The five-minute video was released on YouTube and featured a poem penned and recited by Koechlin. The video was well received by critics and viewers. She also received a letter of appreciation from Melinda Gates, co-founder of Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, for her contribution to bringing attention to women’s issues. The success of Printing Machine was followed by a second collaborative video for the Unblushed series, Noise, another original poem which was released on the company’s YouTube channel on 22 June 2017 (World Music Day).

Koechlin was brought up in a strict environment in Ooty where she spoke English, Tamil, and French. Her parents divorced when she was fifteen; her father moved to Bangalore and remarried, while Koechlin continued living with her mother. She has described the time that she spent at Kalatty between the ages of 5 and 8, before her parents’ divorce, as her “happiest”. Koechlin has a half-brother from her mother’s previous marriage, and a half-brother from her father’s subsequent marriage.

Koechlin identifies herself as a feminist and extensively campaigns for the cause of gender equality. She wrote an article on gender pay-gap for 22 August 2014 issue of Forbes India, and is vocal in her support for the issue: “Equal pay won’t happen because there is a hero-based industry […] need to strive for scripts that empower women, make women our heroes, too.” Koechlin has presented several monologues aimed at spreading public awareness, and has used YouTube as a platform or forum for issues that she advocates for. She appeared in Puma’s “Do You?” advertisement campaign which encouraged women to, “find their best self”. Koechlin, alongside Jacqueline Fernandez and Sakshi Malik led a group of women at an event, organised as part of the movement, to break the Guinness World Record of “Most people to hold the abdominal plank position” for 1 minute. She has been appointed as the ambassador of such campaigns as Vogue India’s “Vogue Empower” and United Colors of Benetton’s “#Unitedbyhalf”, initiatives aimed at spreading awareness on issues of women’s safety and gender equality respectively.

Koechlin was cast opposite Emraan Hashmi and Abhay Deol (her third collaboration with Deol) for Dibakar Banerjee’s political-thriller Shanghai. The film, which was based on the Greek writer Vassilis Vassilikos’s 1967 novel Z (made into a movie of the same name), premiered at the 2012 Toronto Film Festival. Koechlin found the role of a political activist, which she described as vulnerable and awkward to be challenging. She said that the character was, “someone who is not an accepted person […] an outsider”. Shanghai received positive reviews from critics, and was a surprise hit at the box-office grossing over ₹355 million (US$5.0 million) worldwide. Koechlin garnered a mixed response for her performance in the film. While Russell Edwards noted the “biting edge” she brought to the role, Aniruddha Guha thought of her as the “weakest link” in the film.

Following her portrayal of such characters as those in Dev.D, Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, Shaitan, and Margarita With a Straw, Koechlin gained wider recognition and earned the tag of a “nonconformist”. Clarisse Loughrey of The Independent described her as a pioneer for the Indian film industry owing to her unconventional roles and outspoken public presence. Don Groves of Forbes wrote that she has “managed to subvert stereotypes by playing characters who are nothing like each other”. The columnist and film critic Vinayak Chakravorty cites Koechlin as one of the “new ‘new wave’ actors” who has proved her easy screen presence in her short time in the film industry.

She stated in an interview with Daily News and Analysis, that she was a victim of stereotypes in her teenage years and early film career, where she was stereotyped as a ‘white-girl’ in India. She goes on to say, “Even as an actor, you have days when you haven’t slept enough, you don’t feel like you’re good enough or pretty enough … But ultimately, it’s all about attitude. You must live with a little abandon and not be self-conscious. You ought to stop staring at yourself in the mirror, and just smile a little!” She acknowledged her share of confusion regarding her identity as a “white-skinned woman growing up in Tamil Nadu”, who had to defend her “Indian-ness” at numerous occasions . In an interview with The Local, she said of herself, “My skin is white, but my heart is brown.” She has a French passport, and stated in an interview that she chose it over an Indian passport as it is easier to travel with the former.

Koechlin then starred in Zoya Akhtar’s coming-of-age comedy Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara. Akhtar had expressed her wish to work with Koechlin in a prior interview with NDTV, having seen her in Dev.D and the then-unreleased That Girl in Yellow Boots. She played the role of Natasha, a South Bombay girl who works as an interior designer. Koechlin, who took diction classes for the role which required her to speak accented Hindi, revealed that she was keen to do the film because her work in such projects as Dev.D and Shaitan had led her to being typecast in dark roles of prostitutes, troubled teenagers, and misfits. With the worldwide collections of ₹1.53 billion (US$21 million), Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara was a blockbuster hit and became, at the time, the ninth highest-grossing Bollywood film of all time. Koechlin’s performance was well received by critics. Gaurav Malani of The Times of India deemed her “excellent”, and Raja Sen in his review for Rediff.com noted her as “histrionically strong enough to manage varied roles”. Koechlin also received her second Filmfare Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her role.

Born in Pondicherry, India, to French parents, Koechlin was drawn to theatre from a young age. She studied drama at Goldsmiths, University of London, and worked simultaneously with a local theatres company. After returning to India, she made her screen debut as Chanda in the drama Dev.D in 2009–and won a Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actress. Subsequently, she starred in two of the highest-grossing films of their respective release years–the comedy dramas Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (2011) and Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani (2013), both of which garnered her Best Supporting Actress nominations at the Filmfare Awards. Koechlin expanded her career into screenwriting with the 2011 crime thriller That Girl in Yellow Boots, in which she also played the lead role.

Koechlin won The Hindu’s 2009 The MetroPlus Playwright Award along with Prashant Prakash for the play Skeleton Woman which they co-wrote, directed by Nayantara Kotian. The play is a modern adaptation of an Inuit folk tale about a writer; Koechlin played the protagonist’s wife. It premiered at the Prithvi Theatre, Mumbai. Asmit Pathare of Mumbai Theatre Guide in his review wrote: “The actors being the playwrights themselves, seemed to know what they were doing”. She also co-wrote Colour Blind, a play that attempts to rediscover different aspects of the personality of Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore through his life and writings. In dual roles, Koechlin plays the Argentine writer and intellectual Victoria Ocampo (a close associate of Tagore), and a young woman who is writing a research paper on him. Aditi Sharma of Mumbai Theatre Guide calling Koechlin the “star of the play” noted that she “really put in an effort to build her character and it shows”. Koechlin’s other early stage appearances include Atul Kumar’s Trivial Disasters, The Real Inspector Hound, Ajay Krishnan’s Hair, where she plays Rapunzel, and Kapoor’s Hamlet, The Clown Prince.

Koechlin appeared alongside Parineeti Chopra, Richa Chadda, and Bhumi Pednekar in Y-Films’s mini web-series Man’s World, a satire on gender roles. The series was released on YouTube in April 2015. She then starred in Anu Menon’s Waiting, an independent film about the relationship between two people who befriend each other in a hospital, while nursing their respective comatose spouses. Koechlin played the role of Tara Deshpande, a young and brash social media-savvy. She dyed her hair black for the role, as Menon wanted her to look more “earthy”. The film had its world premiere at the Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF) in December 2015, and had its theatrical release in India on 27 May 2016. The film and her performance received positive critical reviews. Sukanya Verma of Rediff.com called the film “absolutely riveting”, and also lauded the “stunningly unhindered” Koechlin writing that she used her aura, “in the most mesmeric fashion to create a woman we sympathise with and wish well for”. Film critic Kunal Guha thought that film belonged to Koechlin who, “impresses by managing to wordlessly convey her character’s state of mind in every scene”.

After facing some early struggle for film roles, Koechlin had four releases in 2011, garnering widespread recognition for her performances in them. The first was Bejoy Nambiar’s Shaitan, a crime-thriller with an ensemble cast that included Koechlin, Rajeev Khandelwal, Gulshan Devaiya, Shiv Panditt, Neil Bhoopalam, and Kirti Kulhari. She played the role of a disturbed teenager and called it an exhausting experience, saying that she felt drained while trying to, “get into a psyche of someone who does a lot of drugs and booze, has lost her mind a little bit and is very vulnerable”. While the character was inconsistently described by film critics as “a nightmare” and “engaging”, Koechlin was praised for her performance, with Raja Sen calling her “an increasingly striking actress”. Upon release the film received positive reviews from critics, and Koechlin was nominated for the Best Actress Award at the Star Screen Awards.

Kalki Koechlin was born in Pondicherry, India, on 10 January 1982 to French parents, Joël Koechlin and Françoise Armandie, who came to India from Angers, France. She is a descendant of Maurice Koechlin, a French structural engineer who played an important role in the design and construction of the Eiffel Tower. Koechlin’s parents are devotees of Sri Aurobindo, and she spent a significant amount of her early childhood in Auroville. The family later settled in Kallatty, a village near Ooty in Tamil Nadu, where Koechlin’s father established a business designing hang-gliders and ultralight aircraft.

 —Kalki Koechlin, in June 2013

Koechlin’s continued association with such commercial films as the supernatural thriller Ek Thi Daayan (2013) and the musical drama Gully Boy (2019) sustained her success, as she continued to draw praise for her performances in independent films, including the comedy drama Waiting (2015) and the slice of life film Ribbon (2017). She won further acclaim and a National Film Award for her role of a young woman with cerebral palsy in the coming of age drama Margarita with a Straw (2014). Beginning in late 2010s, Koechlin made a transition to web content and appeared in a spate of successful web series. She drew particular praise for her portrayal of a lonely socialite in Prime Video’s Made in Heaven and a self-styled godwoman in Netflix’s Sacred Games (both 2019).

Koechlin is particularly known in the Indian media and film industry for her dedication to her work. Atul Kumar, founder of The Company Theatre, and her co-star in Hamlet, noted: ” er commitment as an actor is relentless”. The director Shonali Bose, while filming Margarita With a Straw, said Koechlin was able to give perfect long takes for the film because of the “intense hard work that she put into the preparation of her role”. Her former husband, Anurag Kashyap—who directed her in three films—believes that she “has grown as an actor since Dev D.”. Rajat Kapoor, in whose Hamlet Koechlin performed as Ophelia, believes she is an actress who has the “sensitivity and understanding of filmmaking and theatre”.

Later in 2013, Koechlin appeared in a video entitled It’s Your Fault, along with VJ Juhi Pandey. Dealing with the issue of sexual assaults on women, the video mocks the mindset that blames women for provoking rapes. It was created by All India Bakchod, and was released on their YouTube channel. It’s Your Fault went viral, with over 150,000 views in two days. Koechlin’s sole release in 2014 was Saif Ali Khan’s Happy Ending, where she plays a comic role of a girl obsessed with Khan’s character. She credited her performance in Yeh Jawani Hai Deewani for landing her the role. She said that people noticed her comic timing in the film, and that worked in her favour. The film, which Koechlin described as “spoof on our film industry and on all the romantic comedies”, opened to mixed reviews and was a box-office failure. Despite the film’s mixed reception she garnered praise for her performance. Saurabh Dwivedi of India Today wrote that “Koechlin steals the show with her perfect portrayal of a nagging girlfriend”, and Rohit Vats of Hindustan Times noted that, although her character in the film felt a bit forced, she delivered a “charming” performance.

Both Mantra and A Death in the Gunj released theatrically in the first half of 2017–in the months of March and June respectively. Koechlin’s following release, the d