Shilpa Shetty At first glance, the angelic face of this famous Bollywood star would appear to hold the innocence of a child. But when Shilpa Shetty’s family, life and career are examined further it would appear that behind the painted smile lies a very hard business woman who wont stand for any nonsense. Shilpa Shetty was born into a strict Indian family on June 8th 1975 in Tamil Nadu, India, to Surendra and Sunanda Shetty. She is the older sister to Shamita Shetty who is also a Bollywood star. Shilpa attended St Anthony Girls’ School in Chembur and went to college at Podar College. Shilpa now lives with her family in Mumbai, India, which is where Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt chose to have the birth of their child Shilo. In 1991 Shetty began her career modeling and went on to appear in her first film, Baazigar, at the age of seventeen when she was nominated for a Filmfare Actress Award. Her acting career carried on gaining her several awards for portraying characters with sensitive issues including a film based on the Hollywood blockbuster Philadelphia with Tom Hanks, about and HIV victim, which had up till then not been an issue addressed by Bollywood.
In India, Shetty has also been a guest judge on the equivalent of American Idol, with Simon Cowell, Randy Jackson and Paula Abdul, called Indian Idol. Again, in 2006, Shetty was a judge on the Indian show based on Strictly Come Dancing. In 2006, a court in India issued warrants against Shetty and Reema Sen for "posing in an obscene manner" in photographs published by a Tamil newspaper. The report stated that the two actresses had failed to comply with earlier summonses for the same reason, hence the issuance of the warrants. The petitioner submitted that the paper had published "very sexy blow-ups and medium blow-ups" in its issues December 2005 and January 2006 issues, and which allegedly violated the Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act 1986, Young Persons (Harmful Publications) Act 1956, and the Indian Penal Code. The petitioner further demanded that the images should be confiscated under the terms of the Press and Registration of Book Act 1867. In 2007 Shetty was a contestant on the British television show, Celebrity Big Brother UK. She was the first Indian celebrity contestant and as a celebrity who endorses PETA, the organization urged viewers to vote for her. Within days of the program airing controversy took over as the main interest in the show when some of the other contestants were accused of being racist towards Shetty. She was, however, crowned the winner of the British Celebrity Big Brother 2007 with 63% of the final vote. Once again in April 2007 Shetty became the center point of controversy in her own country, India, when she was at an Aids awareness event with Richard Gere and ended up in a passionate embrace. Following the incident protestors began burning effigies of Gere and setting fire to glamour shots of Shetty.
In early 2007 Shetty was invited to a reception at the House of Commons to meet prime minister Tony Blair, and later to meet Queen Elizabeth II at Marlborough House in London. ABB | 
