Tabu was born in Hyderabad on 4 November 1971. Her parents divorced when she was three, and she was raised by her mother, Rizwana, and her maternal grandparents. Speaking on Rendezvous with Simi Garewal, she recalled a childhood shaped by a book-reading, praying grandmother and a teacher mother. Asked about her father, she said she had no memories of him and had never felt the wish to meet him.
That early clarity runs through much of her life. She did not use her father’s surname, kept her school surname Fatima, and declined to treat his absence as a wound.
Relationships that never became identity
Her early relationship with Sanjay Kapoor during Prem was later confirmed by Kapoor himself. In an ETimes interview, he said they were dating when filming began but were not even speaking to each other by the time it finished. Reports linked the break to his closeness with Maheep Kapoor; Tabu never publicly confirmed that.
In a 1997 Rediff interview, she acknowledged dating producer Sajid Nadiadwala while saying marriage was not on her agenda for years. Years later, Nadiadwala described their bond as friendship. The longest-running speculation concerned Nagarjuna. On Koffee with Karan in 2007, Tabu named him, called the relationship extremely special, and resisted reducing it to friendship. Nagarjuna later described her as a very close friend. Neither confirmed reports that family life and stability were the fault lines.
Career markers and a legal footnote
- Began as a child artist in the 1980s; broke through with Prem.
- Won her first National Film Award for Maachis and her second for Chandni Bar.
- Received the Padma Shri in 2011, alongside work across Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, English and Hindi cinema, including Life of Pi.
- Later hits such as Haider, Drishyam, Andhadhun and Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2 sharpened her reputation.
The 1998 blackbuck poaching case put Tabu among co-accused with Salman Khan, Saif Ali Khan, Sonali Bendre and Neelam. In April 2018 a Jodhpur court acquitted her and the other three while convicting Salman Khan. In May 2025 the Rajasthan government challenged the acquittal in the Rajasthan High Court, so the legal matter is not fully closed.
Why the 2019 framing still matters
In a 2019 Hindustan Times Brunch interview, Tabu refused to treat being single as failure. Her argument: happiness has many sources, loneliness can be handled alone, and being with the wrong partner can create an even more painful situation. That is not a consolation from someone waiting; it is a principle from someone who said she wants to work and see the world alone, and that a relationship should create freedom rather than hold a person back.
For Bollywood Chronicle readers, this is the useful part of the birthday coverage: Tabu’s durability has come less from private relationships than from a body of work that keeps resetting the standard for what a Hindi film actor can do as the years add up.
Source: Bhaskar English
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