Shefali Shah (born Shefali Shetty on 22 May 1973) is an Indian actress of film, television and theatre. Respected for her acting prowess, she works primarily in independent Hindi films and has received local and foreign accolades for her performances. Shah's acting career started on the Gujarati stage before she debuted on television in 1993. After small parts on television and a brief stint with cinema in Rangeela (1995), she gained wider recognition in 1997 for her role in the popular series Hasratein. This was followed by lead roles in the TV series Adhikar (1997), Kabhie Kabhie (1997) and Raahein (1999). A supporting role in the crime film Satya (1998) won her positive notice and a Filmfare Critics Award, and she soon shifted her focus to film acting starting with a lead role in the Gujarati drama Dariya Chhoru (1999).
Unwilling to compromise her artistic convictions, Shah was selective about her roles through the following decades. This resulted in intermittent film work, mostly in character parts and often to appreciation from critics. She appeared in the international co-production Monsoon Wedding (2001) and the mainstream comedy-drama Waqt: The Race Against Time (2005). In 2007, her portrayal of Kasturba Gandhi in the biographical drama Gandhi, My Father won her the Best Actress prize at the Tokyo International Film Festival, and she received the National Film Award for Best Supporting Actress for the drama film The Last Lear. Among her subsequent film roles, she played a leading part in Kucch Luv Jaisaa (2011) and was noted for her work in the social problem film Lakshmi (2014) and the ensemble drama Dil Dhadakne Do (2015).
Shah's career surged upward in the late 2010s as she transitioned to leading roles. She won a Filmfare Short Film Award for her performance in Juice (2017) and followed with two Netflix projects: the romantic drama Once Again (2018) and the International Emmy Award-winning crime miniseries Delhi Crime (2019). Her performance as DCP Vartika Chaturvedi in the latter met with widespread acclaim. Shah wrote and directed two self-starring COVID-19-themed short films in 2020: Someday and Happy Birthday Mummyji, and led the segment "Ankahi" in the anthology film Ajeeb Daastaans (2021). Four 2022 projects, including the Disney Hotstar webseries Human, the feature dramas Jalsa and Darlings, as well as the second season of Delhi Crime, brought Shah further recognition.
Early and personal life
Shefali Shetty was born on 22 May 1973 in Mumbai. She is the only child of Mangalorean Sudhakar Shetty, a banker at Reserve Bank of India (RBI), and his Gujarati wife Shobha, a homeopathy doctor. Shah is fluent in Tulu, Hindi, English, Marathi and Gujarati. The family resided in Santa Cruz, Mumbai at the RBI quarters, where she attended Arya Vidya Mandir School. While she was inclined to the arts as a child, including singing and dancing (she is trained in Bharatanatyam), she did not find particular interest in acting. Her first stint with acting happened on Gujarati stage when she was 10; her school teacher's playwright husband asked Shah's mother if she would permit her daughter to play a character based on Damien Thorn from The Omen (1976). Shah played the part upon her mother's consent and would not act again until several years later. After her schooling, she enrolled at Mithibai College in Vile Parle, opting to study science, but spent most of her student days working in theatre. Shah was married to television actor Harsh Chhaya from 1994 to 2000. In December 2000, she married director Vipul Amrutlal Shah, with whom she has two sons, Aryaman and Maurya.
In addition to acting, Shah is fond of painting and cooking. Finding painting therapeutic, she says it gives her the creative outlet she craves when not acting in films. She trained for six months at Last Ship, an artists' residency in Bandra, and in 2016 took a course at Metàfora, an art school in Barcelona, Spain. Working mostly with acrylic on canvass as well as charcoal and ink, Shah focuses on perspective art, namely "the marriage of perspective with architectural designs" of places she has visited. She cites Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock as her sources of inspiration. One of her paintings was on display at Jehangir Art Gallery in Mumbai at an exhibition held by Art for Concern, where it was eventually sold, while a solo show at The Monalisa Kalagram in Pune in 2017 was, by her own admission, unsuccessful.
Shah opened a restaurant named Jalsa in Ahmedabad, Gujarat in 2021, which serves Indian and international cuisines and offers customers different cultural and recreational activities, from pottery and henna decoration to musical performances such as Garba. She directly supervises its cuisine, some of which is based on her home recipes, as well as decor, having designed some of its interiors, including walls hand-painted by her. The restaurant's second outlet was opened in Bangalore, and was positively reviewed by Lifestyle Asia.
