Ms Versatile
The thing with people like Tabassum Hashmi -- Tabu to the world -- is the superlatives she generates. Spectral beauty, goddess, those eyes, another Meena Kumari, another Nutan, actresses as much as stars. Stop. Tabu is about uncontrived freshness. She is your beauty with brains. And she's one of the best actresses on the circuit -- art, commercial, everything in between -- India's cross-over queen. "It's all valid and important."

She's also among a few who takes risks and goes the distance. In Sazaa-e-Kalapani, she turned up on the sets hair dripping with oil convinced it was the only way to look authentic. For Deepa Mehta's forthcoming Water, she shaved off her hair when a skin-wig wouldn't work. For Tabu, there are no fixed roles, no schools of method acting, no fixed images. Just the woman's instinct of gut-feel in any role she plays, an unlikely terrorist in Maachis or glossy family-type in the Diwali release Hum Saath Saath Hain. "Emotionally she dances on the psychoneurotic tip," says Kamal Hassan, "which is the hallmark of an actor of calibre."