Kuldip Kaur

Kuldip Kaur
Kuldip Kaur in Baiju Bawra (1952)
Born	Kuldip Kaur 1927 Lahore, Punjab, British India
Died	1960 (aged 32–33) Bombay, Maharashtra, India
Cause of death	Tetanus
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1948–1960
Spouse(s)	Mohinder Singh Siddhu

Kuldip Kaur (1927–1960) was an Indian film actress who worked in Hindi and Punjabi films. Known for her roles in a negative character, she was cited as Indian cinema's "most polished vamps" and actor Pran's "opposite number". She started her acting career with the first Punjabi film produced in India following Partition, Chaman, also called The Garden in 1948.

Acclaimed as a "vamp" of "exceptional talent" and the "first female villain" in Indian cinema, she has been compared to artists like Shashikala and Bindu. Active from 1948-1960, she acted in over 100 films, most of them in Hindi and some in Punjabi. She died in 1960 from tetanus.

Kuldip Kaur was born into a prosperous Sikh family in 1927 in Lahore, Punjab, British India. Her family were landowners in Attari, Amritsar District, in Punjab. She was married to Mohinder Singh Siddhu, a grandson of the military Commander of Ranjit Singh's army, General Sham Singh Attariwala. Married at the age of fourteen, she became a mother at the age of sixteen.

She defied convention to join films while still in Lahore. She left Lahore in 1947 while communal violence was raging. She was described as a brave lady by Saadat Hasan Manto in his chapter on Kuldip Kaur, titled "Kuldip Kaur: The Punjabi firecracker" in his book initially titled: Stars from Another Sky: The Bombay Film World of the 1940s. Kaur returned to Lahore in spite of the violence, to pick up Pran's car. His car had been left behind when Pran and she left for Bombay to escape the communal rioting in Lahore following partition of India. She drove the car back alone from Lahore to Bombay, via Delhi.