Ileana D'Cruz

Biography

Ileana D'Cruz (born 1 November 1986) is an Indian actress and model who works predominantly in Telugu and Hindi cinema, as well as Tamil films. She began her career through print modeling and television commercials before moving into acting.

She made her acting debut in Y. V. S. Chowdary's Telugu romantic action drama Devadasu (2006), for which she won the Filmfare Award for Best Female Debut – South. She made her Tamil debut in Kedi (2006) and later appeared in Pokiri (2006), Rakhi (2006), Munna (2007), Aata (2007), Trivikram Srinivas's Jalsa (2008), Kick (2009), and Shankar's Tamil film Nanban (2012). She also reunited with Trivikram Srinivas for the romantic action film Julayi (2012).

Her Hindi debut came with Anurag Basu's romantic comedy-drama Barfi! (2012), in which she played Shruti Ghosh and received the Filmfare Award for Best Female Debut and a nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Her later Hindi films include Rajkumar Santoshi's Phata Poster Nikhla Hero (2013), David Dhawan's Main Tera Hero (2014), Dharmendra Suresh Desai's crime thriller Rustom (2016), Anees Bazmee's Mubarakan (2017), Raj Kumar Gupta's Raid (2018), and Kookie Gulati's financial thriller The Big Bull (2021). She returned to Telugu cinema with Sreenu Vaitla's Amar Akbar Anthony (2018) and later appeared in the social comedy Unfair & Lovely (2024) and Shirsha Guha Thakurta's romantic comedy-drama Do Aur Do Pyaar (2024).