Kirron Kherਕਿਰਨ ਖੇਰ

Early life

Kirron Kher was born Kiran Thakar Singh Sandhu on 14 June 1952 in Bangalore, into a Punjabi Sikh family, and grew up in Chandigarh. Her father, Thakar Singh Sandhu, and mother, Diljit Kaur, raised her in the culturally vibrant Chandigarh of the 1960s, where she studied at the Department of Indian Theatre at Panjab University. Theatre was her first home — she acted on stage and worked in television in the early 1980s before cinema claimed her.

Her first marriage was to Gautam Berry, a Mumbai businessman, with whom she had a son, Sikandar. The marriage ended in divorce in 1985, the same year she married actor Anupam Kher, a fellow Chandigarh theatre alumnus. The couple's partnership — personal and professional — would last four decades.

Career

Kher debuted in films with the Punjabi Aasra Pyar Da (1983), then stepped away from cinema for over a decade. Her comeback was decisive: Shyam Benegal's Sardari Begum (1996), in which she played a thumri singer, won her the National Film Award's Special Jury Award in 1997. Rituparno Ghosh's Bariwali (2000), with Kher as a lonely middle-aged woman, brought her the National Film Award for Best Actress.

She then became one of Hindi cinema's most recognisable mothers and matriarchs: Devdas (2002), for which she won the IIFA Best Supporting Actress award; Main Hoon Na (2004); Hum Tum (2004); Rang De Basanti (2006); Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna (2006); Singh Is Kinng (2008); and Dostana (2008). She also earned international acclaim for the Pakistani film Khamosh Pani (Silent Waters, 2003), winning Best Actress at the Locarno International Film Festival. On television she hosted shows like Purushkshetra and judged India's Got Talent.

What made her unusual was the span: National Awards for austere art-house performances, then a decade as Hindi cinema's most in-demand mother, then a second public career in Parliament — each phase entered on her own terms.

Major works

Her defining performances remain Sardari Begum, Bariwali and Khamosh Pani — three films that showed her command of interior, unsentimental acting. Her commercial Hindi work, from Devdas to Rang De Basanti, made her face familiar to a generation of moviegoers. In 2014 she entered electoral politics with the Bharatiya Janata Party and won the Chandigarh Lok Sabha seat, which she retained in 2019, serving as MP until 2024.

As a parliamentarian she was an active voice on Chandigarh's civic issues, and she continued her television work alongside politics. Her journey from Chandigarh theatre to the National Awards to Parliament is one of the most unusual career arcs in Indian public life.

Personal life

Kher married Anupam Kher on 25 August 1985. Her son Sikandar Kher, from her first marriage, is also an actor. In recent years she has spoken publicly about her battle with multiple myeloma, a form of blood cancer diagnosed in 2020, and her recovery.

Legacy

Kirron Kher's legacy rests on two pillars: as an actor, she proved that middle-aged women could carry serious Indian cinema, winning the country's top acting honours; as a public figure, she carried the confidence of Chandigarh's theatre tradition into Parliament. Few Indian performers have reinvented themselves as completely — from stage to National Awards to the Lok Sabha.