Esha Gupta

Esha Gupta is not the daughter of any Mumbai dynasty, and she did not grow up around film sets. Before stepping onto a movie set, she studied mass communication in Karnataka and won the Miss India International pageant in 2007. That title opened the doors to professional modeling, but her eyes were set on commercial acting.

In 2012, she made her debut in Jannat 2 under the Vishesh Films banner. Critics noticed her because of her physical resemblance to Angelina Jolie, and that comparison followed her for years. But the box office spoke clearly. The film worked, and producers saw in her a draw for male audiences in the thriller genre.

That leap to the big screen was a direct one.

The Weight of Image

That same 2012, she appeared in Raaz 3D and in the political drama Chakravyuh. In the latter, she tried to move away from the femme fatale image by playing a police officer. It was an attempt to prove she could handle dense dialogue in contexts of social conflict. But the Bollywood industry tends to be rigid with actresses who come from the runway.

In 2014, she was part of Humshakals. The film received scathing reviews and was a setback in her career. It was a failed project that made her rethink what kind of scripts she wanted to accept from then on. So she decided to be more selective with exclusivity contracts.

And the gamble paid off.

In 2016, Rustom hit theaters. She played Priti Makhija and made audiences accept her role as an antagonist in a period drama based on real events. The production surpassed 210 million rupees in worldwide box office earnings. It was the moment casting directors started seeing her as more than a face for musical numbers.

A Haven for Streaming Platforms

After appearing in Baadshaho in 2017, the actress noticed that content consumption in India was changing. Traditional cinema was losing ground to streaming, because audiences wanted rawer, less censored stories than those on the big screen.

In 2022, she joined the third season of the series Aashram. Her character Sonia was key to the story's themes of power and manipulation. Data from the MX Player platform placed the series among the most-watched shows of that period in the Asian market.

Filming for the series took place in locations in Ayodhya under heavy security measures.

In 2024, she worked on the project File No: 323, centered on major financial frauds that shook India's economy. The production used high-speed camera technology for the exterior sequences in London and Mumbai. The post-production budget for this film exceeded $15 million because of the complexity of the digital recreations.