Shriya Pilgaonkar

Biography

Shriya Pilgaonkar is an actress and is the only child of Sachin Pilgaonkar and Supriya Pilgaonkar, both actors by profession. Pilgaonkar learned Kathak as a child. She trained as a professional swimmer and competed at the state level, winning gold medals in the under-7 and under-9 categories. She completed her bachelor’s degree in Sociology from St. Xavier’s College in Mumbai. While in college, she took classes in Japanese as she had considered becoming a linguist or translator. Pilgaonkar’s first stint was as a child actor when she was five. She was cast in Tu Tu Main Main (1994), a popular Hindi comedy series directed by her father, and had her mother as a lead actress. Her foray into professional filmmaking began at Harvard summer school. After studying screenplay adaptation there, she pursued a film appreciation course at FTII. She debuted on the big screen in 2013 with Ek Kulti Ek (2013), a Marathi film written, directed, and produced by her father. Her movie debut won her six awards, including the Maharashtra State Government Award for Best Debut Actress (2013). After appearing in a few other film and stage projects, she bagged a role in Un + Une (2015), a French film directed by Oscar-winning director Claude Lelouch. Pilgaonkar made her Bollywood debut in 2016 with Fan (2016), a Shah Rukh Khan-starrer written and directed by Maneesh Sharma under the Yash Raj Films banner and produced by Aditya Chopra. In 2018, she appeared in the Amazon Prime India web series Mirzapur (2018), making her a popular face. She followed it up with several more shows, including The Gone Game (2020), Crackdown (2020), Guilty Minds (2022), and The Broken News (2022). Over the years, she has been a part of films like Jai Mata Di (2017), linkHouse Arrest (2019), Bhangra Paa Le (2020), and linkKaadan (2021).