Nargis Dutt (Hindi: नर्गिस, Urdu: نرگس) (June 1, 1929 – May 3, 1981), known by her screen name, Nargis, was an Indian actress. She was one of the leading actresses in India from the 1940s until the 1960s. One of her best-known roles was that of Radha in the Academy Award-nominated Mother India (1957), a performance that won her a Best Actress trophy at the Filmfare Awards. During her career, Nargis was part of numerous commercial successful, and was particularly known for her frequent collaboration with actor Raj Kapoor. In 1958, Nargis left the film industry. She returned to acting on few occasions in the 1960s. Some of her last films include the drama Raat Aur Din (1967), for which she was awarded the National Film Award for Best Actress, making her the first actress to win the award.
She was the wife of actor Sunil Dutt, who appeared in Mother India as her son. In early 1970s, she was the first patron of the Spastics Society of India, and her subsequent work with the organization brought her recognition as a social worker, and later a Rajya Sabha nomination in 1980. Along with her husband, she formed the Ajanta Arts Cultural Troupe, which roped in several leading actors and singers of the time, and performed at remote frontiers to entertain the Indian soldiers; it was the first troupe to perform at Dhaka, after the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 and the formation of Bangladesh.
Nargis died in 1981 of pancreatic cancer. Her son, Sanjay Dutt, an actor in Bollywood, made his film debut a few months after her death. Her daughters are Namrata Dutt Kumar and Priya Dutt, who has been a Member of Parliament (Lok Sabha) since 2005. After her death, in 1981, the Nargis Dutt Memorial Foundation was established in her memory. Today, the National Film Awards ceremony awards the Nargis Dutt Award in her name.
Nargis was born Fatima Rashid, the daughter of the Allahabad-based Muslim singer, Jaddanbai and a Hindu Mohyal father of Rawalpindi, named Uttamchand Mohanchand. Nargis married the actor Sunil Dutt (himself a Mohyal from Jhelum, British India). Her brother Anwar Hussain was also an actor in the film industry. Nargis started her career in the 1930s as a child artist and progressed quickly to leading roles in several popular films in the 1940s and 1950s which remain popular today. In most of her films she appeared opposite the director and Bollywood star Raj Kapoor. She is said to have been his real-life love interest as well as his favorite heroine. The affair was doomed to remain an affair, however, as Kapoor made no move to divorce his wife.
It is a well-known story that while shooting for Mother India, Nargis was trapped amidst lit haystacks while filming a scene. As the flames got higher and higher, Sunil Dutt, who played her rebellious son Birju in the film, ran through the fire and rescued her. Later, Dutt proposed to her, and they married on March 11, 1958. The marriage produced three children: Sanjay, Namrata, and Priya. Sanjay Dutt went onto become a very successful film actor. Namrata went onto marry actor Kumar Gaurav, son of veteran actor Rajendra Kumar who had appeared alongside both Nargis and Sunil Dutt in Mother India. Priya became a politician.
Nargis as Radha, with her sons, Birju (Sunil Dutt) and Ramu (Rajendra Kumar), in Mother India (1958), the pivotal role of her career.
Fatima was recruited to the cinema at an early age. Fatima made her first film appearance in 1935, in Talashe Haq. The six-year-old was credited as "Baby Nargis". Nargis, her stage name, means "Narcissus", the flower. She was always credited as Nargis in all of her films.
Nargis appeared in numerous movies after her film debut; she won lasting fame for her later, adult, roles, starting with at the age of 14, in Mehboob Khan's Taqdeer in 1943 opposite, Motilal. She starred in many popular Hindi-Urdu movies of the late 1940s and 1950s such as Barsaat (1949), Andaz (1949), Awaara (1951), Deedar (1951), Shree 420 (1955), and Chori Chori (1956). In most of her films she starred alongside Raj Kapoor and Dilip Kumar.
Her most famous role came in Mehboob Khan's Oscar-nominated rural drama Mother India in 1957. She won the Filmfare Best Actress Award for her performance. After her marriage to Sunil Dutt in 1958, Nargis gave up her film career after her last few film releases to settle down with her family. She made her last film appearance in the 1967 film Raat Aur Din for which she won a National Film Award for Best Actress, the first actress to win in this category. She also received a Filmfare Nomination as Best Actress for this film.
Nargis died of pancreatic cancer on May 3, 1981, only a few days before her son Sanjay Dutt's debut film Rocky, which was released on May 7.
