Actors - Helen

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	Actors - Helen

Helen (October 21 1939) was a Bollywood dancer and actress best known for playing vamps and vixens in Bollywood movies of the 1960s and 70s. She was famous for her performances in flamboyant dance sequences and cabaret numbers. The Bollywood playback singer Asha Bhosle frequently sang for Helen.

Career

Helen was born in Burma in 1939. Her birth name was Helen Richardson. Helen's mother Marlene, Helen, and Helen's brothers Roger and Patrick fled to India during World War II. Helen's mother worked as a nurse. In 1947 her mother gave birth to Helen's sister Jennifer. Because her mother's income as a nurse was very limited, Helen quit school to work in films. She had been studying classical Indian Kathak dancing and felt that she had a talent for dance. A family friend, an actress known as Cukoo, helped her find jobs as a chorus dancer in the films Shabistan and Awaara
(1951). Helen was soon working regularly, and was featured as a solo dancer in films like Alif Laila (1952) and Hoor-e-Arab (1953)

In 1958, she had her first major hit with her performance in the song Mera Naam Chin Chin Chu in O.P. Nayyar's hit film, Howrah Bridge. She was in great demand after this, performing as a cabaret dancer and vamp in film after film. She was known as the Cabaret Queen. She never succeeded as a heroine, but vamp roles and "item numbers" kept her busy through the 1960s. Her luck took a turn for the worse in the 1970s. Younger actresses were taking the vamp roles. Also, changing rules for Bollywood heroines made it possible for sexy young things in go-go boots to do the cabaret numbers and play the heroine. Helen fell into financial difficulties.

Writer Salim Khan came to her rescue. He helped her get good roles in some of the movies he was co-scripting with Javed Akhtar: Imaam Dharam, Don, and Dostana. This led to a demanding role in Mahesh Bhatt's film Lahu Ke Do Rang (1979), for which she won a Filmfare Best Supporting Actress award. Soon afterwards, she married Salim Khan, as his second wife. The arrangement was said to have been tense at first, but Salim's children by his first wife are now said to be on good terms with their stepmother.

Helen retired from the screen for a number of years, but made a few "guest star" appearances in 1999 and 2000. In Mohabbatein, she plays the prim and proper head of a girls' school, who is pulled out onto a dance floor and surprises everyone with her lively dancing.

Helen has a neice Nina and nephew Nikhil.

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Actors - Helen

Career

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