Sanjay Leela Bhansali

Sanjay Leela Bhansali
Bhansali at an X Factor Event in 2011
Born	Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
Nationality	Indian
Occupation	Filmmaker, Director, Producer, Screenwriter, Editor, Music Director
Website	SLBfilms.com

Sanjay Leela Bhansali is an Indian film director, producer, screenwriter, and music director. He is well known for his commercially and critically successful movies like Khamoshi:The Musical(1996), Hum Dil De chuke Sanam(1999), Devdas(2002), Black(2003), Goliyon ki Raasleela Ram-Leela (2013), and Bajirao Mastani(2015) He is an alumnus of the Film and Television Institute of India. He is the founder of a production house, Bhansali Productions. Bhansali has adopted the middle name "Leela" as a tribute to his mother, Leela Bhansali.

Sanjay Leela Bhansali was born on February 24, 1963 in Mumbai, India. His father was film maker Navin Bhansali and mother Leela Bhansali. Bhansali's father struggled with alcoholism and eventually succumbed to it. Bhansali has a sister named Bela Segal.

Bhansali began his career as an assistant to Vidhu Vinod Chopra and was involved in the making of Parinda, 1942: A Love Story and Kareeb. However, they had a fall out when Bhansali refused to direct Kareeb. He made his directorial debut with Khamoshi: The Musical, the commercially unsuccessful but critically acclaimed narration of a daughter's struggle to communicate with her deaf mute parents. His second film was a triangular love story, Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam, starring Aishwarya Rai, Salman Khan, and Ajay Devgan which established his individualistic stamp for visual splendor and creating auras of celebration and festivity. It was a great success and won numerous awards.

His next film, Devdas, starring Shah Rukh Khan, Aishwarya Rai and Madhuri Dixit, was Bhansali's ode to the novel of the same name which became the highest-grossing film of 2002. It was India's submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. It stood eighth in Time magazine's "The 10 Greatest Movies of the Millennium (Thus Far)". Then came Black, starring Amitabh Bachchan and Rani Mukerji, which stood fifth in Time (Europe)'s "10 Best Movies of the Year 2005" among films from across the world. Bhansali's Saawariya was met with sharp criticism and poor collections at the box office.