Radhika Apte

Radhika Apte (born 7 September 1985) is an Indian film and stage actress. Radhika has acted in Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Telugu and Tamil films. She has also acted for Mohit Takalkar's theatre troupe Aasakta.

She was nominated for SIIMA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her Tamil film Dhoni. She married musician Benedict Taylor in 2012. 9 of her films are scheduled to release in 2014.

Early life

Apte was born on September 7, 1985 in Pune as the daughter of Pune's leading neurosurgeon and chairman of Sahyadri Hospital, Dr. Charudutt Apte. A Maharashtrian by birth, she is an economics and maths graduate from Fergusson College, Pune. After doing four films, she moved to London and studied contemporary dance at London's Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance.

Career

Radhika Apte first appeared in a small role in the Hindi film Vaah! Life Ho Toh Aisi! in 2005. Actor Rahul Bose, who had seen Apte perform in Anahita Oberoi's play Bombay Black, suggested her name to director Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury who cast her in his Bengali film Antaheen along with Aparna Sen, Sharmila Tagore and Rahul Bose. She played the role of Brinda Roy Menon, a TV journalist, in Antaheen.

2009 she had her first Marathi release, KBC productions' Gho Mala Asla Hava by Sumitra Bhave in which she appeared as Savitri, a village girl. She later collaborated with Sumitra Bhave again on the Hindi docufiction Mor Dekhne Jungle Mein. That year, she had also worked on Jatin Wagle's Ek Marathi Manoos, Akash Khurana's Life Online, about "a bunch of youngsters working in a BPO" and Amol Palekar's Marathi film, Samaantar. In 2010, she was seen in Maneej Premnath's thriller The Waiting Room and later appeared in a significant role in Ram Gopal Varma's Rakta Charitra and its sequel. 2011 she appeared in the anthology film I Am and in Shor in the City under Ekta Kapoor's Balaji Films banner. She worked for the third time with Sumitra Bhave and Sunil Sukthankar on Ha Bharat Majha, a film inspired by Anna Hazare's movement that was shot in 14 days and screened at various film festivals.

In 2013, she was seen in the Bengali film Rupkatha Noy. About her character she said, "I play Sananda, an IT engineer, who is a single mother of a three-year-old child. Sananda had a dreadful past, which keeps haunting her". Apte's first four 2014 releases were Postcard, Pendulum, Legend and Vetri Selvan in four different languages--Marathi, Bengali, Telugu and Tamil, respectively--after which another Marathi film of hers, Lai Bhaari, released. Pendulum, which was described by Apte as a "story on magic realism which takes you through multiple layers of parallel realities, or apparent realities", had her playing a working woman in relationship with a younger man, while in Vetri Selvan she had essayed the role of a lawyer. Legend and Lai Bhaari were commercial success, the latter breaking the opening weekend box office record and becoming the highest grossing Marathi film of all time.

She has over a dozen upcoming films in various languages. She has finished shooting for three Hindi films -- Manjhi: The Mountain Man directed by Ketan Mehta, Hunter directed by Harshvardhan Kulkarni, which both she has described as "typical masala films", and Sriram Raghavan's Badlapur. Manjhi: The Mountain Man is based on Dashrath Manjhi and Radhika plays Manjhi's wife Falguni Devi in the film. In the South, she has been filming for the Tamil film Ula and for a Malayalam film with Fahadh Faasil. She has further more signed up for The Field, the feature debut of Rohit Karn Batra, and Leena Yadav's Parched, a U.S.-Indian co-production.

Theatre

Apte is actively involved with theatre and has been been part of several stage plays, mostly in Marathi language. She is associated with Mohit Takalkar's theatre troupe Aasakta in her hometown and has acted in plays like Tu, Purnaviram, Matra Ratra and Samuel Beckett's That Time with Rehan Engineer. She also performed a commercial Hindi play Kanyadaan and an English play named Bombay Black. In 2013, she was part of a Marathi play named Uney Purey Shahar Ek, which was an adaptation of Girish Karnad's Benda Kaalu on Toast ("Baked Beans of Toast") and she has stated that she has plans to do an English play in London. Apte has said that she prefers to work in experimental theatre.

Short films

Radhika Apte has also acted in a number of short films, including Darmiyan, in which she played a college girl Ekta, and Vakratunda Swaha, which was filmed by Ashish Avikunthak over a period of 12 years. She played one of the lead roles in Anurag Kashyap's short film on eve teasing, That Day After Everyday, which was released in YouTube in 2012.

Personal life

In September 2012, Radhika got married to British musician Benedict Taylor. Radhika met Benedict in 2011 in London during her year-long sabbatical when she had gone to learn contemporary dance. Director Sarang Sathaye, a friend of Radhika, informed in October 2012 that the two had been living together for a long time and that a registered marriage took place "a month ago", while an official ceremony was said to be held in March 2013.

Galleries of Radhika Apte