रेणुका देवी

Renuka Devi was the screen name of Begum Khurshid Mirza (born Khurshid Jehan; 4 March 1918 – 8 February 1989), one of the educated, 'respectable-family' heroines who helped change how actresses were seen in 1930s India. A daughter of Sheikh Abdullah and Waheed Jahan Begum, founders of the Women's College at Aligarh, she was brought into films by Devika Rani at Bombay Talkies, who gave her the screen name Renuka Devi in memory of her own late sister. She appeared in Bombay Talkies productions including Jeevan Prabhat (1937), Bhabhi (1938), Bhakti (1939) and Bari Didi (1939), and in the studio's landmark Naya Sansar (1941), singing several of her own songs on screen — among them 'Ek Naya Sansar Basa Le' and 'Chalo Bhool Bhulaiya Khelen'. She went on to headline box-office successes such as Sahara (1943), Ghulami (1945) and Samrat Chandragupta (1945) before announcing her retirement from films in February 1945. After Partition she moved to Pakistan, where she volunteered with the All Pakistan Women's Association, and from 1964 built a celebrated second career as a character actress on Pakistan Television in serials such as Kiran Kahani (1973) and Zair, Zabar, Pesh (1974), retiring in 1985. Her memoirs were later published as A Woman of Substance.