Urmila Matondkar began her career as a child artist in a landmark film. Her work in Shekhar Kapoor’s ‘Masoom’ (1983) was notable and gave her instant recognition. From that point onwards it was case of high expectation bogging down her performances in the subsequent films.

Her first film as an adult was ‘Narsimha’(1991) where she had a small part and didn’t got much attention. Similar conditions of relative anonymity continued for Urmila till 1995 and then came Ram Gopal Varma with ‘Rangeela’. With ‘Rangeela’ everything changed for Urmila as she shot towards superstardom overnight and perhaps unwittingly became a subject for the fantasies of the Indian male.

Performing this author backed role with panache and skill Urmial established herself in the industry and from that point onwards she was one of the ‘A-listers’. From that point Urmila was the resident ‘Sex Symbol’ of the industry with her following projects with ‘Ramu’ like Daud and Kaun reinforcing this image.

During this period popularity was their but on screen successes were few for Urmila, Judaai (1996) and Satya (1997) being the exceptions. Interestingly in both these films Urmila had taken on characters completely contrasting to that of ‘Milli’ (Rangeela). So she was gradually proving herself as an able and versatile actor but one signature performance was still lacking and Rangeela almost seemed like a flash in a pan.

She turned a new leaf in the 21st century and with ‘Pyaar Tune Kya Kiya’ (2001) and 'Bhoot’ (2002) Urmila proved here mettle. ‘Tehzeeb’ and ‘Pinjar’ followed in 2003, with the later garnering her a lot of critical acclaim. ‘Ek Hasina Thi’ saw her doing a negative role once again and she excelled as a duped girl who is out to take revenge from a man she loved not so long ago. This film also marked a departure from the dominant discourse in Hindi cinema and Urmila should have been lauded for just signing for a ‘risky’ project like this, that too for a debutante director. But she took the risk and came out of the film unscathed.

This is what Urmila has been in recent times, unconventional and successful and hopefully this is what she will remain for the rest of her career as well.