Yami Gautam

For her debut performance, Gautam received critical acclaim as well as several awards and nominations, including the award for Best Female Debut (tied with Ileana D'Cruz for Barfi!) at the Zee Cine Awards, and a nomination under the same category at the 58th Filmfare Awards.

Yami Gautam Dhar (born 28 November 1988) is an Indian actress known predominantly for her work in Hindi films.

A daughter of Punjabi film director Mukesh Gautam, she began her career as a model, and starred in television soap operas such as Chand Ke Paar Chalo (2008–2009) and Yeh Pyar Na Hoga Kam (2009–2010).

After making her acting debut as the lead in the 2009 Kannada-language film Ullasa Utsaha, Gautam made her Bollywood debut in a leading role in Shoojit Sircar's romantic comedy Vicky Donor (2012).

Co-starring opposite debutante Ayushmann Khurrana, Annu Kapoor, and Dolly Ahluwalia, she portrayed Ashima Roy, a Bengali woman who falls in love with the titular character, a Punjabi lad from the Arora family, and gets to know about his past after their marriage.

The film, which marked Bollywood actor John Abraham's production debut, received positive reviews from critics and proved to be a major commercial success as one of the highest-grossing films of the year with worldwide grossing of ₹645 million (US$3.9 million).

In 2012, she had her first Hindi film release in the comedy-drama Vicky Donor, which won her the Zee Cine Award for Best Female Debut.

After a two-year absence from Bollywood films, Gautam returned in 2014 and appeared in two films, the first of which was Eeshwar Nivas' romantic comedy film Total Siyappa, co-starring Ali Zafar, Anupam Kher, and Kirron Kher, in which she played the love interest of Zafar's character.

Gautam's second Bollywood release that year was Prabhu Deva's action thriller Action Jackson, in which Ajay Devgn portrayed a double role while Gautam and Sonakshi Sinha were featured as the love interests of his characters.

Both Total Siyappa and Action Jackson underperformed at the box office.

Gautam had supporting roles in the thrillers Badlapur (2015) and Kaabil (2017), and greater success came for starring in the war film Uri: The Surgical Strike and the satire Bala (both 2019).

She starred in the streaming films A Thursday (2022), Dasvi (2022), and Chor Nikal Ke Bhaga (2023), and had further commercial success in the satire OMG 2 (2023) and the political thriller Article 370 (2024).

Yami Gautam was born in a Hindu Brahmin family in Bilaspur, Himachal Pradesh and was brought up in Chandigarh.

Her father Mukesh Gautam is a Punjabi film director.

He is the VP of PTC Network.

Her mother is Anjali Gautam.

She has a younger sister Surilie Gautam, who made her big screen debut with the Punjabi film Power Cut.

Yami Gautam did her regular schooling, and later entered college to pursue a graduate degree in law honours.

She had aspired to join Indian Administrative Service (IAS) as a young girl, but at the age of 20, she decided to venture into an acting career.

Though she was pursuing studies in Law Honors (first-year PU Student of law), she left full-time studies for acting.

Recently, she has been doing her part-time graduation from Mumbai.

She is fond of reading, interior decoration and listening to music.

In 2015, during the filming of Sanam Re, she began dating Pulkit Samrat.

Though she never spoke about it, their relationship was confirmed by Samrat's wife.

In 2015, Gautam appeared alongside Varun Dhawan and Nawazuddin Siddiqui in Sriram Raghavan's action thriller Badlapur.

The film, which focuses on the story of a man named Raghu who, over the course of 15 years, avenges the murders of his wife Misha and his son, emerged as a critical and commercial success, collecting ₹770 million (US$11 million) worldwide, with Gautam's performance receiving praise.

In 2016, Gautam played Pulkit Samrat's love interest in two romances—Divya Khosla Kumar's Sanam Re and Vivek Agnihotri's Junooniyat.

In the former, she played a high-school girl who falls in love with Samrat's character, and in the latter, she portrayed a Punjabi girl who falls in love with an army officer.

Both Sanam Re and Junooniyat were critical and commercial failures.

The following year, Gautam collaborated with Hrithik Roshan on Sanjay Gupta's revengeful romantic thriller Kaabil (2017), which tells the story of a blind man who avenges the rape of his blind wife.

The film, as well as her performance, received mixed-to-positive reviews, and the film emerged as a financial success, earning ₹1.96 billion (US$28 million) worldwide.

Later in 2017, Gautam featured briefly in Ram Gopal Varma's political thriller Sarkar 3, the third installment of Varma's Sarkar franchise, alongside Amitabh Bachchan, Jackie Shroff, Manoj Bajpayee, and Amit Sadh.

The couple eventually broke up in 2018.

Gautam married Aditya Dhar on 4 June 2021.

After marriage, she changed her name to Yami Gautam Dhar.

Gautam was 20 when she moved to Mumbai to pursue a career in movies.

She made her television debut in Chand Ke Paar Chalo.

She continued to play the lead in Raajkumar Aaryyan.

Following this, she played her most notable role in television in, Yeh Pyar Na Hoga Kam, which aired on Colors.

She has also participated in reality shows Meethi Choori No 1 and Kitchen Champion Season 1.