Moushumi Chatterjee

Indian actress

Moushumi Chatterjee (born Indira Chattopadhyay, 26 April 1955) is an Indian actress who is recognised for her work in Hindi and Bengali cinema. She was one of the highest paid actresses in Hindi films during the 1970s. She joined the Bharatiya Janata Party in 2019.

Chatterjee was born in Calcutta to a Bengali Brahmin family which hailed from Bikrampur in undivided Bengal. Her father, Prantosh Chattopadhyaya, was in the Indian Army and her grandfather was a judge. Her real name is Indira and Moushumi is her screen name. Indira Chattopadhyaya (her real name) was married to Jayanta Mukherjee at a young age. The couple has two daughters. Jayanta Mukherjee is the son of music composer and singer Hemant Kumar. Jayanta is also an exponent of Rabindra Sangeet. With the support and encouragement of her husband and father in law, Indira accepted the offer to act in films and adopted Moushumi as her screen name. Her film career as a heroine began only after her wedding. She always prioritised her family above her film roles. Her daughter Payal, who had type 1 diabetes and in coma since 2018, died on 13 December 2019.

From 1985 to 1991, Chatterjee got more offers as a character actress and she made the transition to roles of mother and bhabhi (sister in law), often pairing with Dharmendra or Sunil Dutt. She played Sunny Deol's sister in law in Ghayal. Occasionally, she got lead roles in films in the 1990s such as Ghar Parivaar and Aa Ab Laut Chalen, both opposite Rajesh Khanna, then Santaan, Prateeksha (1993) and Udhaar Ki Zindagi with Jeetendra and Keemat: They Are Back (1998). She acted in the Indo Canadian production Bollywood/Hollywood in 2003 In 2019, she joined Bharatiya Janata Party.