Veteran Bollywood actress Vidya Sinha, known for her role in Basu Chatterjee’s film Rajnigandha died yesterday, family sources said.
She was 71 and died at a private hospital in Juhu where she was rushed last Sunday after severe breathing problems.
Since her condition was critical she had been put on a ventilator but failed to recover and died around 1pm. Until very recently she was acting in a television serial – Kulfi Kumar Bajewala.
But in between, she had been missing from the serial due to her illness but bounced back a few weeks ago.
A major figure in Bollywood in the 1970s-1980s, comfortably straddling both commercial and alternate cinema, Sinha was noted for her sad and sombre as well as light and romantic roles with many top actors of the era.
Among her other notable films were: Hawas (1974), Chhoti Si Baat (1975), Mera Jeevana (1976), the crime-thriller Inkaar, Kitaab (both 1977), Pati, Patni aur Woh and Basu Chatterjee’s Safed Jhooth (both 1978), horror film Saboot (1980), Love Story and as a gangster in Josh (both 1981) and Salman Khan’s mega-hit Bodyguard (2011).
Gracefully sailing into senior roles in films and television, she was seen in serials like Kkavyanjali (2005), Haar Jeet (2012), Qubool Hai (2012), Isqh Ka Rang Safed (2015), Chandra Nandini (2016) and lately in Kulfi Kumar Bajewala (2018 onwards).
Born in Mumbai on November 15, 1947, to film producer Rana Pratap Singh, she started her professional career as a model and even won the Miss Bombay contest, catching the eye of renowned filmmaker Basu Chatterjee, making her mark in the industry though she entered it after marriage.
Though her first film was Raja Kaka (1974), it was Chatterjee’s Rajnigandhaa that year which brought her to fame.