Happy Birthday Parveen Babi: Lesser known facts about the controversial actress

She was born 4 April 1949, in a middle class Muslim family in Junagadh, Gujarat and studied BA in English Literature at St. Xavier’s College, Ahmedabad.

Babi made her film debut with the film Charitra (1973), opposite cricketer Salim Durrani. The film was a resounding flop, but Parveen was noticed and was snapped up for several more films

Her first major hit was Majboor (1974), opposite Amitabh Bachchan. With a film career spanning 15 years, Babi appeared in more than 50 Hindi films in a variety of genres. She appeared alongside Amitabh Bachchan in a total of twelve films that performed really well at the box office..

Parveen was in a relationship with three people – Danny Denzongpa, Mahesh Bhatt and Kabir Bedi. Mahesh left his wife and daughter Pooja Bhatt to live with Parveen. It was a period when Parveen was a top star and Mahesh a flop filmmaker.

Parveen was surrounded by a mental illness, which Mahesh described as paranoid schizophrenia. The disease caught Parveen in such a way that she could never get out of it. She was rumoured to have had an affair with Amitabh Bachchan, with whom she later developed irrational fears as she accused him of trying to kill her.

Parveen Babi surprised everyone after she suddenly disappeared from the scene in 1983. There were a lot of speculations about her disappearance from being controlled by the underworld to even taking American nationality. In fact, reports also claimed that she left India and Bollywood for a spiritual journey.

Parveen converted to Christianity during the last years of her life, as she stated in an interview, and was baptised in a Protestant Anglican Church at Malabar Hill.

Media reports claim that she was one of the highest paid actresses of her time. She was found dead 22 January 2005 after her residential society secretary alerted the police that she had not collected milk and newspapers from her doorstep for three days.