Dressed in a traditional Malayali sari — just for BT — Vidya Balan gets out of her car and into Banana Leaf, a South Indian restaurant Andheri.

This is her first time there, and every waiter is keen to serve her a dish or two. Over some delicious South Indian cuisine, I get talking to this actress, who hails from Palakkad, a district that connects Kerala to the plains of Tamil Nadu. “Our customs, rituals, language and food is a mixture of these two states,” she informs me, “While the concept of idlis in our diet comes from Tamil Nadu, the appam and the stew comes from Kerala.”

Date of Birth : January 1, 1982
Education : St. Antony’s School and St. Xavier’s College
Family : Father - P R Balan (Vice-President of ETC channel), Mother (House maker), Elder Sister.
City : Palghat, Kerala
Occupation : Bollywood actress and Fashion Model

Vidya Balan, who began her career starring in many music videos, soap operas and commercials, made her acting debut in the Bengali film, Bhalo Theko (2003), for which she won critical acclaim. She later made her Hindi film debut with Parineeta (2005), for which she received a Filmfare Best Female Debut Award, and received her first commercial success with Rajkumar Hirani’s Lage Raho Munna Bhai (2006). Balan has thus established herself as one of the most promising actresses of the industry.

This is something that has been bothering me for quite some time. Vidya Balan gets an awful lot of negative press for her alleged chunkiness. I would like to refute that allegation and instead lay the blame firmly at the feet of those people in charge of her styling - or who have let her style herself, if that is the case.

Do you think, actor John Abraham is a gay icon?  well atleast vidya balan has different point of view.

His latest role in Dostana in which he strips down to his bare minimum, has found not only many takers among his females fans, but also has men – especially those from the gay community.

The community is really glad to his bare body. And John has been given the tag of being the new gay icon by the community.

And guess what? John doesn’t find it the least offending, and neither his lady love Bipasha has any objections to it.

Vidya Balan might look really odd with young heroes like Shahid Kapur but she continues to bag biggie films with a period feel or where the heroine is supposed to look Indian. And yeah, what she’s best suited to – matured heroes!

She’s starring with Sanjay Dutt and Salman Khan in Raj Kumar Santoshi’s ‘Jis Lahore Nahin Dekhya Woh Jamiya Nahin.’

Thankfully she’ll be playing Sanjay Dutt’s wife in the film and isn’t the romantic interest of youngster Neil Nitin Mukesh who’s the third lead!

Matured actress Vidya Balan might look really odd with young heroes like Shahid Kapur,Imran Khan etc but she continues to bag biggie films with a period feel or where the heroine is supposed to look Indian. And yeah, what she’s best suited to -matured heroes!

She’s starring with mature bollywood actors like Sanjay Dutt and Salman Khan in Raj Kumar Santoshi’s upcoming movie ‘Jis Lahore Nahin Dekhya Woh Jamiya Nahin.’

Thankfully she’ll be playing Sanjay Dutt’s wife in the film and isn’t the romantic interest of youngster Neil Nitin Mukesh who’s the third lead!

Well history was made yesterday, no I’m not alluding to the successful launch of the Chandryaan mission, but to the fact that CNN IBN featured a half hour special on all the scientists involved in the mission. Why history? because it was probably the longest, unbridled footage of South Indians on mainstream television, since well, Kamal Hassan sang mere jeevan sathi, to serenade Rati Agnihotri in Ek Dooje Ke liya on Doordarshan (as an aside, should I get myself examined because I actually remember this thing??) . I’m not kidding about this. All the scientists that were featured were South Indians and no where in this footage did people make fun of the way South Indians spoke, walked, danced, oiled their hair etc etc. To say, I was stunned would be an understatement. I was infact most suspicious of the whole thing and was quite sure that a Sardarji would pop out in the end and say chak de phatte and make fun of the way “madrasees” ate pappads or washed their bums or whatever mannerism of ours that people find peculiar, even if it was rocket science that we were talking about.

Sanjay Dutt-Salman Khan starrer Raj Kumar Santoshi’s adaptation of Asghar Wajahat’s play Jis Lahore Nahin Dekhya Woh Jamiya Nahin won’t be shot in Lahore, as originally planned. Now Santoshi will recreate Lahore in Hyderabad.

Santoshi confirmed and said, “Shooting in Lahore seems impractical. Primarily because we may not get the architecture of the partition times any more. So Nitish Roy is building Lahore in Hyderabad for us. Every lane, bylane, the transportation, the electric wires will be recreated. Our set will look more like Lahore than Lahore itself.”