Eight-time Filmfare Award winner and one of mainstream Bollywood’s most versatile faces, Vidya Balan has carved a niche for herself in a wide range of roles. If you wish to have a closer look at her career, we’ve got you covered with a guide on the best Vidya Balan movies and where to watch them.
Where can you stream Vidya Balan’s filmography?
If you wish to watch Vidya Balan’s earlier screen credits, Hotstar, Netflix and Prime Video can come to the rescue. Much of her later OTT releases are Prime Video originals such as Sherni, Jalsa, and Neeyat. Occasionally, her other recent works can be found in more niche platforms. For instance, one can stream Balan’s acclaimed short film Natkhat on Voot.
Once you’ve got your Vidya Balan watchlist sorted, have a look at how much the Bollywood actress has evolved.
Early struggles and Parineeta breakout
Success didn’t come easy to Vidya Balan who after a brief role in the ‘90s sitcom Hum Paanch could feature prominently only in music videos of independent acts like the rock-pop group Euphoria and neoclassical artiste Shubha Mudgal. Through her involvement in these videos, she crossed paths with director Pradeep Sarkar who would later cast her as the protagonist in her breakout hit Parineeta. A period romantic drama that earned 13 Filmfare nominations at its time, Parineeta found a much-younger Balan holding her own even in the midst of seasoned actors like Sanjay Dutt and Saif Ali Khan.
Leading lady status and further critical acclaim
Parineeta gave way to many more versatile projects with Balan scoring prominent roles in five movies in 2007 alone. So, while she played a conventional romantic interest in the comedies Heyy Baby and Lage Raho Munna Bhai, she also played a terrifying dissociative identity disorder patient in the horror-comedy Bhool Bhulaiyaa. Character parts in projects like Mani Ratnam’s capitalist drama Guru and the Amitabh Bachchan-led tearjerker Paa bore further testimony to her versatility.
From Ishqiya to Kahaani: Redefining Bollywood Heroines
It was towards the late 2000s when Balan firmly cemented her status as not just a leading lady but the top billing star in many women-led projects, ushering in a new wave for female characters in Bollywood. Cases in point include a gut-wrenching portrayal as a revenge-seeking pregnant woman in the neo-noir Kahaani and a delightfully terrific turn as a morally gray femme fatale in Ishqiya.
Despite her career reaching a slight lull in the mid-2010s, she sprung back to acclaim in the following decade with roles in OTT releases like a morally righteous forest officer in the thriller Sherni and the eponymous mathematician in the biopic Shakuntala Devi. Not afraid of addressing social taboos, Balan also attached herself to well-intentioned projects like Begum Jaan, a period drama focusing on the everyday struggles of sex workers, and Natkhat, a short film addressing domestic violence and sexual abuse from the perspective of a kindergartener.
Why is The Dirty Picture Vidya Balan’s best movie?
Partly inspired by the life of late South Indian erotic actress Silk Smitha, The Dirty Picture subverted the sexualisation of actresses in this revelatory satire set in the sleazy world of ‘80s softcore films. The narrative does bite more than it can chew at times but with a powerhouse lead performance by Vidya Balan as an underdog-turned-starlet, The Dirty Picture’s flaws seem forgivable. Tracing the various ups and downs of an artist puppeteered by a misogynistic industry, Balan captures the nuances of an ill-fated protagonist with equal amounts of sassy raunchiness and an underlying emotionality.
