Jacqueline Fernandez, who is grabbing headlines for her alleged involvement in the Rs 215 crore money laundering case, has been a Bollywood actor for more than a decade. Over the years, she has established herself as one of the most popular faces in the Hindi film industry, having worked in more than 20 feature films.
Jacqueline, a Sri Lankan national, began her showbiz journey with modelling in the early 2000s. She was declared the winner of the Miss Sri Lanka Universe pageant in 2006. After achieving the big feat, Jacqueline decided to leave everything behind in her home country and fly to India following an agent’s suggestion to try modelling here. The actress knew no one in India at the time, but she definitely had a confidence to make it big one day.
“When I told my parents about it, they were like, ‘India is huge. You don’t anybody there. Are you sure you want to go there? How will you manage?’ I told them, ‘I have found an agency and everything is sorted.’ But in my head I was like nothing has been sorted. But I thought let me try it,” Jacqueline had recalled during an interview on The Bombay Journey.
After a couple of years of struggle, Jacqueline landed a lead role opposite Riteish Deshmukh in the 2009 fantasy action comedy ‘Aladin.’ Even though the Sujoy Ghosh directorial had stalwarts like Amitabh Bachchan and Sanjay Dutt and earned Jacqueline best female debut awards, it turned out to be a major disappointment at the box office. This was followed by another flop Jaane Kahan Se Aayi Hai, which was released in the same year. Things became tough for Jacqueline, who stopped getting any work after two back-to-back flops. But thankfully, the actress did not have to sit at home for too long as she got her breakthrough with Mohit Suri’s Murder 2 in 2011. Murder 2 became a turning point in Jacqueline’s career as her popularity skyrocketed to another level in Bollywood. But not many would know that the actress was not comfortable about doing the movie.
“Murder was very bold and provocative. I told Mukesh Bhatt, ‘I can’t do this because I had just done Aladin where I was Jasmine. So, if you want me to be bold and sensuous, I’m not very comfortable or confident to do this,’” Jacqueline had recounted in the same interview. It was Jacqueline’s first director, Sujoy Ghosh, who convinced her to take up the challenge and do it with full conviction.
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After the success of Murder 2, Jacqueline worked in two super hit movies including Housefull 2 and Race 2, both came in 2012. During the filming of Housefull 2, the actress got into a romantic relationship with director Sajid Khan. Their affair became the talk of the town and there was speculation of an impending wedding. However, the two parted ways in 2013.
The actress then went on to appear in Kick, which marked her first collaboration with Bollywood superstar Salman Khan. Following Kick’s massive success in 2014, Jacqueline became a part of Salman’s inner circle and continues to share a close bond with the ‘Dabangg’ star till date.
After tasting back-to-back successes, Jacqueline’s career once again hit rock bottom when Roy, Brothers, Dishoom, A Flying Jatt and A Gentleman failed miserably at the box office. Barring Housefull 3, the actress did not have any hits in the years 2015 and 2016. In 2017, David Dhawan’s Judwaa 2 came as a sigh of big relief for Jacqueline, who was desperately looking for a commercial success. The actress was paired opposite Varun Dhawan in the film, which was a reboot of the 1997 action-comedy of the same name.
Jacqueline reunited with Salman Khan in Race 3 (2018), but the film was, unfortunately, panned by the critics and the audiences alike. Her OTT movies Drive and Mrs Serial Killer, which dropped on Netflix in 2018 and 2019, respectively, failed to impress the audiences either.
In 2021, Jacqueline appeared in a multi-starrer horror comedy ‘Bhoot Police,’ which was unable to generate positive buzz after her name cropped up in a multi-crore money laundering case involving alleged conman Sukesh Chandrasekhar. Since then there’s been a major downfall in Jacqueline’s career. She might have had two releases Bachchhan Pandey and Vikrant Rona this year, but the cloud of controversies has not left her.
