Suhasini Mulay (born 20 November 1950) is an Indian actress in Assamese, Bollywood and Marathi films as well as television. She is also an acclaimed documentary filmmaker and has made over 60 documentaries, 4 of which have won four National Film Awards. She has also won a National Film Awards for Best Supporting Actress.
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Early life and education
Suhasini was born in a Marathi-speaking family in Patna where she spent the early part of her childhood. She lost her father when she was only three and was brought up by her mother, noted documentary filmmaker and film historian Vijaya Mulay. Suhasini was attracted to film because of her mother. She did her schooling from Ballygunge Shiksha Sadan (BSS), Kolkata.
Personal life
Mulay was in an extended live-in relationship that ended in 1990. She moved to Mumbai in 2000. On 16 January 2011 she got married at Arya Samaj to a physicist, Prof. Atul Gurtu.
Career
In 1965, she was chosen by Pears Soap to be its model. It was this ad film which caught Mrinal Sen's attention and he signed her for Bhuvan Shome (1969).
Though Bhuvan Shome proved to be a milestone in Indian cinema, Suhasini did not pursue acting as a career. Instead, she enrolled at the McGill University in Montreal, Canada, for a course in agricultural technology with specialisation in soil chemistry and microbiology. She also obtained a degree in mass communication, and majored in film, radio, TV, journalism and print from the same university.
Suhasini returned to India in 1975 and worked as an assistant to Satyajit Ray in the Bengali film Jana Aranya. Later she joined Mrinal Sen as an assistant director in Mrigayaa. Since then, she has been actively producing films and has made over 60 documentaries. She achieved National Film Awards for four of them. She also worked as a casting director for the 1993 film, Sardar, which was a biopic of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.
Almost 30 years after Bhuvan Shome, she made a great comeback to mainstream Bollywood cinema, through Gulzar's Hu Tu Tu for which she received a national award as the best supporting actress. She has been playing mother roles in Bollywood since then. She has worked on Jaane Kya Baat Hui, a television serial. She then completed the film Peeda, directed by Hemant Verma. Peeda won the best feature film award at FOG Film Festival in USA.