Rani Mukherjee is an actress who can be credited as the queen of bollywood, not only because of her first name which means 'the Queen' in Hindi and Bengali but also due to the kind of image that she had developed during all these years in the Indian film industry.

Rani Mukherjee born March 21, 1978 in West Bengal, India.Her father Ram Mukherjee is a retired director and also the founder of Filmalaya Studios She has appeared in nearly 40 films She charged 4 crore rupees for Baabul, making her the highest paid actress in India. She has worked six times with Shahrukh Khan, five times with Amitabh Bachchan and Salman Khan, and four times with Abhishek Bachchan and Preity Zinta.

Her first Hindi movie was 'Raja Ki Aayegi Baraat' in 1996 and it was a big flop. Everybody considered her as a goner with her first movie crash landed, but she wasn't ready to give it up and she was right, success wasn't too far away. Two years later in 1998 she signed an Aamir Khan movie called 'Ghulam' which was a big hit of that year and her role in the movie as Alisha received much praise. But Rani's career was about to take a hard twist, a huge international hit was waiting for her in the form of 'Kuch Kuch Hota Hain' in the same year. With the huge success of the movie her star value skyrocketed and she was right there in the line of main stream actresses of bollywood. Once she got the start she never looked back, with her trademark husky voice, beautiful eyes and of course the talent she has become one of the most popular bollywood actresses of all time. Since her start in 1996, Rani has appeared in nearly 40 films.

The actress changed the English transliteration of her surname from Mukherjee to Mukerji several years ago. At the time, it was reported that she did this for numerological reasons. Recently, she has stated that numerology was not a concern; her name had been put down as Mukerji on her passport, and she wanted to be consistent.

She is coming from a movie oriented family, her father Ram Mukherjee is a retired director and her mother is a former playback singer, her maternal aunt Debashree Roy was a popular Bengali actress and her cousin Kajol is a bollywood superstar. And another cousin Sharbani Mukherjee also works in movies. Though this movie oriented family background allowed her easy entrance bollywood, she never hesitated to give her hundred percent efforts to each and every project she signed in. her hardworking and trusty nature made her the favorite of many directors and co stars.

While in school at the age of 14, she did a cameo role in her father's Bengali film Biyar Phool.

But year 2002 was all too shiny for her as her movie 'Saathiya' was a huge hit, it actually climbed up to the list of top five grossing movies of that year. After the success of Saathiya, she signed several movies and most of them performed well both in the box office and in the award functions. In 2003, her new look in Chalte Chalte opposite Shah Rukh Khan was much appreciated. And another movie Veer-zaara was also a hit. After this she had teo successful movies called 'Yuva' and 'Hum Tum'.

In 2005 she did 'Bunty Aur Babli', 'The rising' and 'black', all of these were high profile movies and the way she managed these demanding scripts brought her much praise and the commercial success of these movies lifted her star value much higher. She continued this success in 2006 with hit movie 'Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna' directed by Karan Johar. But in the same year her much hyped movie 'Baabul' disappointed all with a wimpy performance at the box office.

She has won six Filmfare awards including best actress award, supporting actress award and also won several critics awards. Last year she won Filmfare Best Actress Award and Filmfare Critics Award for Best Performance for the movie black. She also is the winner of multiple Star screen awards and Zee cine awards. All these awards rightly give us an idea about the kind of talent she has. Over the past years, Mukherjee has been consistently topping Filmfare's annual power list of top Bollywood female stars for three consecutive years (2004-2006).