Vidya Sinha

Some Lesser Known Facts About Vidya Sinha

• Vidya Sinha’s father was a producer and a director.

• Her mother died when on Vidya’s birth so her maternal grandfather the famous director Mohan Sinha took her responsibility. Mohan Sinha was the one who gave Madhubala her screen name Madhubala and introduced actors like Madan Puri and Jeevan.

• She never wanted to pursue acting as a career. But one of her aunts forced her to participate in a local beauty pageant, i.e., Miss Bombay when she was just 17, which she eventually won.

• Vidya Sinha after winning the contest started doing modelling and was featured in many magazines.

• When she was just 18, she fell in love with her neighbour, a south Indian Brahmin guy named Venkateshwaran Iyer and got married in 1968.

• Even after her marriage, she continued modelling and was spotted by Director Basu Chatterjee on one of the famous magazines’ cover picture who approached her for a movie.

• Basu Chatterjee offered her the movie Rajnigandha (1974) which was a commercial hit. After the film, Basu Chatterjee became Vidya Sinha’s guide and mentor.

• Vidya Sinha was offered the role of Roopa (played by Zeenat Aman) in Satyam Shivam Sundaram which she rejected as she was not comfortable with clothes Zeenat Aman wore in the film for the same role.

• Vidya Sinha worked with many renowned actors of her time including Sanjeev Kumar, Vinod Khanna, Vinod Mehra, Shashi Kapoor, etc.

• She was active in the film industry as a leading actress for over 12 years, but at the peak of her career, she adopted a girl child, named Jahnvi Sinha. So, she took a break from acting so that she could bring her daughter up by herself.

• In 1996, her husband died after a prolonged ailment and she, along with her daughter, moved to Australia where, in 2001, she met doctor Netaji Bhimrao Salunke online, and after a little courtship, both got married. However, the marriage could not last long and both got divorced in 2009.

• In 2004, Vidya Sinha came back to India and started her second inning on TV through Ekta Kapoor‘s Kkavyanjali.

• The reason behind their split was that Vidya Sinha claimed that her husband used to torture her mentally and physically, She even lodged an FIR against her husband.

• She is an avid animal lover.