Kiara Advani

Alia Advani (born 31 July 1992), known professionally as Kiara Advani (), is an Indian actress who appears predominantly in Hindi films. After making her film debut with the 2014 poorly received comedy Fugly, Advani had her first commercial success with a brief role in the 2016 sports biopic M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story. Her career advanced with starring roles in the Telugu political drama Bharat Ane Nenu (2018) as well as the Hindi romantic drama Kabir Singh and the comedy Good Newwz (both 2019).

Early life and background

Advani was born to Jagdeep Advani, a Sindhi Hindu businessman and Genevieve Jaffrey, a teacher whose father was a Muslim from Lucknow and a mother who was Christian of Scottish, Irish, Portuguese, and Spanish ancestry; and had a Bengali godmother. Born as Alia Advani, she changed her first name to Kiara prior to the release of her first film, Fugly, in 2014. She has stated that it was Salman Khan’s suggestion to change her name from Alia to Kiara, as Alia Bhatt was her contemporary. In an interview to Filmfare in 2019, she stated that the name was inspired from Priyanka Chopra’s character Kiara in the film Anjaana Anjaani. The elder of two siblings, Advani has a younger brother, Mishaal. She is also related to several celebrities via her maternal family. Actors Ashok Kumar and Saeed Jaffrey are her step-great-grandfather and great-uncle, respectively, whereas model Shaheen Jaffrey is her aunt.

Career

Advani made her acting debut with Kabir Sadanand’s comedy-drama Fugly in 2014. She featured alongside an ensemble cast including Mohit Marwah, Arfi Lamba, Vijender Singh, and Jimmy Sheirgill. Taran Adarsh of Bollywood Hungama said: “Kiara Advani catches you completely unaware” and has the “combination of looks and talent”, whereas Mehul S Thakkar of Deccan Chronicle noted her performance as being “very striking” and said she “shows a lot of promise”. The film emerged as a commercial disappointment.

Advani’s next film role was in the Neeraj Pandey-directed biographical sports drama M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story in 2016, about the life of MS Dhoni, an Indian cricketer who was the former captain of the Indian cricket team. Starring Sushant Singh Rajput as Dhoni, Advani and Disha Patani played his love interests. Rachit Gupta of Filmfare bemoaned that both leading ladies had only “marginal roles”. With gross earnings of over ₹2.16 billion (US$30 million) in worldwide ticket sales, the film emerged as one of the highest-grossing Indian films of that year. The following year, Advani appeared opposite newcomer Mustafa Burmawalla in Machine, an action romantic thriller from the director duo Abbas–Mustan.

Advani began 2018 by appearing in the anthology film Lust Stories, a Netflix production consisting of four segments dealing with female sexuality. She featured in Karan Johar’s segment, playing a newly married wife whose husband, played by Vicky Kaushal, fails to recognise her sexual dissatisfaction. Writing for NDTV, Raja Sen found her to be “positively lovely” in it. She next made her debut in Telugu cinema with Koratala Siva’s political drama Bharat Ane Nenu, which is about a student, played by Mahesh Babu, who unexpectedly becomes the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh. Janani K of India Today opined that she “shines in her brief role” but added that her character was “more of an eye-candy who doesn’t add any purpose to the story”. The film had worldwide earnings of ₹2.25 billion (US$32 million), making it one of Telugu cinema’s highest grossers. Also that year, Advani appeared in a music video titled “Urvashi”, sung by Yo Yo Honey Singh, opposite Shahid Kapoor.

Boyapati Srinu’s Telugu action drama Vinaya Vidheya Rama was Advani’s first release of 2019. In a scathing review for The Hindu, Sangeetha Devi Dundoo wrote, “It isn’t Kiara Advani’s fault that she looks lost in the melee.” Advani returned to Hindi cinema with a special appearance in Abhishek Varman’s period drama Kalank. Her next appearance was in Sandeep Vanga’s romantic drama Kabir Singh alongside Shahid Kapoor. An adaptation of Vanga’s 2017 Telugu movie Arjun Reddy, it is about the titular character, played by Kapoor, who goes on a self-destructive path and becomes an alcoholic surgeon after his lover, played by Advani, marries someone else. Critics responded negatively to the film’s depiction of misogyny and toxic masculinity. Her final role that year was in Raj Mehta’s comedy film Good Newwz, about two couples’ tryst with in vitro fertilization. Reviewing the film for Mint, Udita Jhunjunwala found her to be “endearing as the god-fearing expectant mother-to-be”. Both Kabir Singh and Good Newwz rank among the highest-grossing Hindi films of the year.

In 2020, Advani starred in Guilty, a Netflix thriller film about sexual assault. Ektaa Malik of The Indian Express considered the film to be a “lost opportunity” and added that Advani’s character had been “reduced to the ‘tortured-artistic-creative’ types” while Rohan Naahar of Hindustan Times wrote, “Kiara delivers an absolutely electric performance as the unreliable Nanki, a fiery college student with a fondness for Faiz.” During the same year, she was seen as the wife of Akshay Kumar in the horror comedy Laxmii, a remake of the Tamil film Kanchana. Instead of theatres, Laxmii was directly released online owing to COVID-19 pandemic.

Upcoming films

Advani is portraying the title role of a girl who found love in a dating app in Indoo Ki Jawani, a T-Series production co-starring Aditya Seal. It is scheduled to release in theatres on 11 December 2020 with only 50% occupancy due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This will be followed by her female lead role opposite Kartik Aaryan in Anees Bazmee’s 2021 horror comedy Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2. She has finished shooting for Karan Johar’s 2021 production Shershaah, a patriotic war drama also featuring Sidharth Malhotra.

In November 2020, Advani began the filming of Leena Jaitley and Raj Mehta’s Jug Jugg Jeeyo, a comedy opposite Varun Dhawan, along with Anil Kapoor, Neetu Kapoor and Prajakta Koli.

Filmography

Film and television

Key

Denotes films that have not yet been released

Year	Film	Role	Notes
2014	Fugly	Devi	Debut film
2016	M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story	Sakshi Rawat
2017	Machine	Sarah Thapar
2018	Bharat Ane Nenu	Vasumathi	Telugu film
	Lust Stories	Megha	Karan Johar’s segment
2019	Vinaya Vidheya Rama	Seetha	Telugu film
	Kalank	Lajjo	Special appearance
	Kabir Singh	Preeti Sikka
	Good Newwz	Monika Batra
2020	Guilty	Nanki Dutta
	Angrezi Medium	Herself	Special appearance in song “Kudi Nu Nachne De”
	Masaba Masaba	Herself	Web series; cameo appearance
	Laxmii	Rashmi Rajput	Released on Disney+ Hotstar
	Indoo Ki Jawani	Indoo Gupta
2021	Shershaah	TBA	Post-production
	Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2	TBA	Filming
	Jug Jugg Jeeyo	TBA	Filming

Music video

Year	Title	Performer(s)	Ref(s)
2018	“Urvashi Remix”	Yo Yo Honey Singh

Awards and nominations

Year	Film	Award	Category	Result
2015	Fugly	Screen Awards	Most Promising Newcomer	Nominated
		Big Star Entertainment Awards	Most Entertaining Actor (film) Debut – Female	Nominated
2019	Bharat Ane Nenu	Zee Cine Awards Telugu	Best Find of the Year	Won
		SIIMA Awards	Best Debut Actress – Telugu	Nominated
	N/A	Asiavision Awards	Emerging Star of the Year	Won
2020	Kabir Singh	Zee Cine Awards	Best Actress (Viewer’s Choice)	Nominated
	Good Newwz	International Indian Film Academy Awards	Performance in a Supporting Role (Female)	Pending
	Guilty	Filmfare OTT Awards	Best Actor, Original Web Film (Female)	Nominated