Kajol’s most iconic roles and how she refused to be fit into a box

There's a version of Kajol most of India met first: windswept hair, a yellow saree, running toward a train in a field of mustard flowers. Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge's Simran is, thirty years on, still the image people reach for when they think of her and, fair enough, it's one of Bollywood's most enduring frames. But spend any real time with her filmography and a different picture emerges: an actress who, even at her most romantic, was quietly the one taking the bigger swing. Kajol’s filmography showcases far more than this one iconic frame, as the actress managed to create an identity for herself that simply could not be put into a box, evading the curse of being typecast in an industry that works dominantly with tropes. She managed to achieve this feat despite being regularly cast opposite arguably Bollywood’s biggest superstar, Shah Rukh Khan.

Let’s go back further, to 1993, and take a look at Baazigar's Kajal, early evidence that Kajol’s identity wasn't just going to be that of the love interest. Yet again, opposite Shah Rukh Khan's morally slippery antihero, she held her own in a film that had no interest in easy answers. Four years later came Gupt: The Hidden Truth, and with it, arguably her boldest choice early in her career, playing the twist antagonist in a psychological thriller, at a moment when most actresses her age were sticking to safe, sweet leads. It's the kind of role that doesn't always get remembered in the highlight reels, but it's the one that branches out beyond the norm and shows you who she was going to be as an actress -  someone drawn to an edge, not away from it.

Then, of course, came the run that made her a household name in the truest sense: Kuch Kuch Hota Hai's Anjali was probably one that only catapulted Kajol’s success and name across the country, establishing her as an actress that was here to stay. Half the film played into a tomboyish role that would eventually grow out of the boyish charm that Kajol portrayed convincingly, into the eventual role of the female lead. This role was followed by Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham's Anjali, the emotional anchor of a sprawling, chaotic family saga. In a film that was centred around the concept of family, Kajol’s Anjali became an endearing mother figure that was equal parts warm, funny and lovable. These movies ended up providing us with the roles that are quoted at weddings and the songs that people sing along to at sangeet. 

The movies that followed, however, are the ones that are easy to underrate. In Fanaa, she played Zeenat: blind, guarded, unravelling in real time opposite Aamir Khan. In a film that demanded she carry genuine tension rather than charm, Kajol managed to show her artistry as an actor beyond playing the part of just a love interest. In My Name Is Khan, her character was quieter still. As Meera, she delivered a performance that let silence do as much work as dialogue.

And then, rather than coast, she started over. Helicopter Eela marked a shift into more mature, character-first territory:  the overbearing mother, the woman whose identity had been quietly subsumed by someone else's life. It set the tone for what's become arguably her most interesting stretch yet: Salaam Venky, Maa, Sarzameen, Do Patti, and now Maharagni: Queen of Queens - a run through horror, courtroom drama and action-thriller territory that most of her '90s contemporaries have never attempted, at a career stage when most actresses are asked to slow down, not speed up.

That, really, is the throughline. Kajol was never the actress chasing the safest version of stardom - she was the one who kept choosing the harder scene, the murkier character, the genre nobody expected her in. She could go from a tomboy to a heartthrob to a villain, and all these varying renditions of her would still be believable because she would play it with the same grit and diligence as she did when she first stepped on screen. Thirty years on from that mustard field, she's still doing exactly that.