Veteran Hindi film actress-director Asha Parekh will soon be feted with the Lifetime Achievement honour for her contribution to cinema at this year’s Dadasaheb Phalke Awards by the President of India, Droupadi Murmu. Union Information and Broadcasting Minister, Anurag Singh Thakur, took to his Twitter handle to announce the honour for the actress.
He tweeted, “Honoured to announce that the Dadasaheb Phalke Selection Jury has decided to recognise & award Asha Parekh ji for her exemplary lifetime contribution to Indian Cinema. The Dadasaheb Phalke Award shall be presented by the Hon President of India at 68th NFA in Vigyan Bhawan (sic).”
In a career spanning almost five decades, Asha Parekh started her journey as a child artiste at the age of 10 with the film Maa (1952) under the screen name Baby Asha Parekh. The social family drama was directed by Bimal Roy for Bombay Talkies. He was asked to go to Mumbai from Kolkata to direct the film for the studio, which was going through bad times.
Sources stated that Bimal saw Asha dance at a stage function and cast her in the film and then repeated her in Baap Beti. The latter film's failure disappointed her, and even though she did a few more child roles, she quit acting for the time being to resume her schooling.
At the age of sixteen, Asha again tried her hand at acting. She tried to make her debut as a heroine, but she was rejected from Vijay Bhatt's film Goonj Uthi Shehnai because the filmmaker claimed she was “not star material.” Later, film producer Subodh Mukherjee and writer-director Nasir Hussain cast her as the heroine in the film Dil Deke Dekho (1959), opposite Shammi Kapoor, which made her popular. The film also led to a long-standing association between Asha and Nasir. The two were even rumoured to be dating, which was later confirmed by the actress herself in her memoir, The Hit Girl.
In 1992, the actress was honoured with the Padma Shri for her contribution to cinema. Three years later, Asha featured in the film, Andolan and subsequently retired after her cameo appearance in the 1999 film Sar Aankhon Par.