This Actress, Who Made Her Debut With A Superstar, Underwent Surgery After Horrific Accident, Also Battled Cancer
This actress made her dream debut opposite Shah Rukh Khan and went on to do many films before she met with a fatal accident that changed her life.
This actress made her dream debut opposite Shah Rukh Khan and went on to do many films before she met with a fatal accident that changed her life. We are talking about Mahima Chaudhry, who made her debut in Subhash Ghai’s Pardes opposite Shah Rukh Khan.
How she got her debut film
Mahima was born on September 13, 1973, in Darjeeling. Her father hailed from a Jat family, while her mother is from Nepal. Beauty pageants beckoned early, and Mahima won the Miss Darjeeling title. Modelling assignments and television commercials followed. Who can forget Aishwarya Rai, Mahima Chaudhry, and Aamir Khan’s famous Pepsi commercial! Subhash Ghai noticed her when she was a VJ on a music channel and cast her in Pardes. Ghai, who considered the alphabet ‘M’ lucky for him, suggested she change her name and thus she became Mahima Chaudhry from Ritu Chaudhry.
The accident that changed her life
In 1999 when she was shooting for Ajay Devgn, Kajol starrer ‘Dil Kya Kare’ she met with a fatal accident. Her car rammed into a truck in Bangalore. Talking about the accident, Mahima said in an interview with Pinkvilla, “I thought I was dying, and at that point, no one even helped me get to the hospital. It was only after reaching the hospital, much later, when my mother came, Ajay came and they went to discuss. I got up and saw my face in the mirror and saw the horror. When they did the surgery on me, they took out 67 glass pieces,”
She further said, “I had to be with stitched stapled and had to be indoors and not be exposed to sunlight. My room was completely blacked out. I didn't look at myself; there was no mirror. Lights which had UV rays light couldn't be there so that the marks don't stay. There were a lot of movies that I had lined up for myself during that time, and I had to let it go. I didn't want people to know because at that time, people were not that supportive. If at that time, I had discussed it and said that I had cut myself like this, they would have said... 'oh, iska toh chehra kharab ho gaya, let's sign someone else.'
Mahima Chaudhry's divorce
Mahima got married to Bobby Mukerji in 2006. The couple got divorced in 2013. They have a daughter named Ariana.
Her battle with breast cancer
Mahima Chaudhry was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2021. She made the news public after her full recovery in 2022. Mahima didn’t tell her mother, a Parkinson's patient about her disease. Talking about her battle with cancer, the actress told the media, “People told me to be strong, I also told myself the same thing. But I did not want to give myself this fake sense of strength. Instead, I decided to embrace the reality for what it was, and gave myself the right to feel down and vulnerable when I had to. I told the doctor to remove both my breasts, I don't want to die."
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“It wasn't easy to let my little daughter watch me in that state. I looked miserable with all that hair loss, energy and life draining out of my body on a daily basis, I looked wretched and sickly. My doctors gave me hope that being in an early stage, I'd recover and that I was not terminally sick. But my daughter couldn't fathom that because she saw me as being very sick and dreaded losing me forever. It was a heart-wrenching to see the fear of a parent's looming death in this child's eyes; it rattled me,” she said.
Mahima will next be seen in Kangana Ranaut’s film ‘Emergency’ in which she is playing Pupul Jayakar.
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