Deepika Padukone has managed to wow us time and again ever since her super-confident debut opposite Shah Rukh Khan in Om Shanti Om (2007). She’s tremendously beautiful no doubt but doesn’t just rely on her beauty to coast through performances. She does ample justice to all her roles and makes the audience sit up and take notice of her histrionics as well. We present a list of ten of her best films from the beginning of her career till now. We hope this Deepika Padukone Movies list adds to you movie-watching pleasure during the present quarantine.
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1. Om Shanti Om (2007)
Director: Farah Khan
Deepika Padukone’s first Bollywood film, Om Shanti Om, directed by Farah Khan, had her essaying a double role. The film was a modern retelling of Bimal Roy’s Madhumati (1958). Deepika played a fictional ’70s superstar called Shantipriya who gets killed by her filmmaker husband. A junior artist Om Prakash (Shah Rukh Khan) is in love with her and witnessed the incident. He couldn’t save her and he too passed away due to an accident. His soul gets reincarnated into a producers’ newborn son. Om Kapoor (SRK) is a big star but keeps getting flashes of his past birth. He devises a plan of apprehending the culprit by making a film based on his memories starring him and a lookalike of Shanti, Sandhya (Deepika). Deepika was confidence personified in the film and essayed both the roles smoothly.
2. Love Aaj Kal (2009)
Director: Imtiaz Ali
Imtiaz Ali weaves two tales of love into one in this romance. Jai Vardhan Singh (Saif Ali Khan) and Meera Pandit (Deepika Padukone) are a modern-day couple living in London. They are happy with each other but do not believe long term relationships. Meera goes to India, while Jai stays in London, hoping to be called to San Francisco, where working at the Golden Gate Inc. is his dream job. Jai meets Veer Singh Panesar (Rishi Kapoor) a Sikh hotelier living in London who inspires Saif’s character to get his life on track by narrating his heartwarming love story set in the 1960s. The two tracks run parallel, with Saif playing Rishi’s younger self as well in the film. Deepika played a regular girl with ambitions of her own who goes through the cycle of breakup and separation to understand what she wants from life. It was a straight-from-the-heart performance alright.
3. Cocktail (2012)
Director: Homi Adajania
Homi Adajania made a nice film about a man falling in love with two girls at once and then being unable to decide with whom he wants to spend the rest of his life. He copped out in the end and made the hero choose the good girl in the end. Deepika Padukone played Veronica, a rich girl who likes to live in the extremes. Her life revolves around hookups and booze. It’s a 24/7 party and she doesn’t apologise for her way of looking at things. She meets Meera (Diana Penty), who has been thrown out by her husband and takes her in. They both meet Gautam Kapoor (Saif Ali Khan) , a rich boyfriend and all three gel instantly, becoming fast friends in the process. He and Veronica become friends with benefits and Meera accepts that relationship. She stays with them and doesn’t move out. 
4. Yeh Jawani Hai Deewani (2013)
Director: Ayan Mukerji
The film starts off with the geeky Naina Talwar (Deepika Padukone) joining her friends Aditi Mehra (Kalki Koechlin), Kabir "Bunny" Thapar (Ranbir Kapoor) and Avinash "Avi" Arora (Aditya Roy Kapoor) on a hiking trip to Manali. Bunny plans to travel the world. Naina develops feelings for him but doesn’t reveal them, knowing that he doesn’t want to settle down. The friends meet again at Aditi’s wedding and sparks fly once more. This time, Bunny realises that being with Naina is more important to him than his dream job and he proposes to her and they get engaged, surprising their friends. Everybody agreed that Deepika looked too beautiful to be cast as a geeky introvert unsure of what she wants from life. Like anybody would have been crazy not to fall in love with her. Leaving aside that implausibility, she essayed her character thoroughly well and her chemistry with Ranbir was the best thing about the film.
5. Chennai Express (2013)
Director: Rohit Shetty
40 something Rahul belongs to a family of confectionery shop owners. When his grandfather passed away at 99, his grandmother requested him to submerge the ashes at Rameswaram. He sets out in the Chennai Express from Mumbai, planning to get down at Kayan and join his friends on a road trip to Goa, reasoning that all oceans are one and he would rather have some fun and submerge the ashes in Goa. He gets off at Kalyan but forgets to collect the pot containing the ashes. He runs back to the train and then helps a girl and four others -- in a spoof of sorts -- to DDLJ -- get inside the train. The girl, Meenamma (Deepika Padukone) is running away from her family, the guys are goons sent by her father to collect her and as he’s witness to a crime -- one of the goons pushes a TC off the train -- he must ride with them to their native village in Chennai Express. The two become friends during the picturesque journey and later he helps her escape again, falling for her in the process. Deepika brought out the mannerisms of Menamma perfectly through her acting. Her scenes with SRK were fantastic indeed in this comedy. She showed that she can hold her own doing comedy as well.
6. Goliyon Ki Raasleela Ram-Leela (2013)
Director: Sanjay Leela Bhansali
This is Bhansali’s take on the classic Romeo And Juliet story set in Gujarat. The fictional village Ranjhaar has been a den of arms manufacturers and smugglers where two clans, Rajadi and Sanera, have been at loggerheads with each other since time immemorial. Ram (Ranveer Singh), one of the younger chieftains of the Rajadi clan, falls in love with Leela (Deepika Padukone), the daughter of the chief matriarch of the Sanera clan. The star-crossed lovers run away to start a new life. However, things escalate and soon the village is in danger of witnessing an all-out war. Deepika and Ranveer’s chemistry literally set the screen on fire. And her dance moves too dazzled the audience.
7. Piku (2015)
Director: Shoojit Sircar
Does a successful, financially independent modern girl actually need a man? Maybe, if the mood takes her and certainly on her terms. Piku was unusual in the sense that the heroine (Deepika) was saddled with an eccentric and self-absorbed father (Bachchan), who went about telling all and sundry that she wasn’t a virgin. Despite it all, she loves her dad. The deal-maker for her is that her man should get along with her father. She meets a taxi operator (Irrfan) and the trio take a road journey together from Delhi to Kolkata, during which she thaws to him. She finally finds someone willing to accept her with all her baggage. The film ends on that hopeful note. Deepika played a modern woman who is happy in her given space and doesn’t have time for traditional norms like marriage. She loves her father too much to mind his eccentricities and doesn’t consider him a burden. It was another realistic performance from the actor.
8. Bajirao Mastani (2015)
Director: Sanjay Leela Bhansali
Ranveer Singh essayed the role of the legendary Peshwa Bajirao I, Deepika Padukone played Mastani, his second wife and Priyanka Chopra brought to life the character of Kashibai, his first wife. Bajirao was a valiant warrior who extended the might of the Marathas both up North and down South. During one such campaign, he meets Mastani, the Muslim daughter of the king Chhatrasal and is attracted towards her for the valour she shows on the battlefield. She becomes his second wife and rivalry erupts between her and Kashibai. Mastani isn’t welcome at the court in Pune and hence Bajirao constructs another palace for her and starts spending more and more of his time there, leading to Kashibai experiencing further heartbreak. When he goes to battle Nasir Jung in the South, Bajirao’s mother and his eldest son imprison Mastani and her son Shamsher Bahadur. He’s successful against Nasir Jung but gets badly injured. Deepika was in her element depicting the titular roles.
9. Padmaavat (2018)
Director: Sanjay Leela Bhansali
Padmaavat tells of the immortal love between Rajput ruler Maharawal Ratan Singh (Shahid Kapoor) and his second wife Padmavati (Deepika Padukone), who was a Sri Lankan princess. They fell in love when he was recuperating in Sri Lanka after being shipwrecked off the island’s coast. He marries her and takes her to Rajasthan, and they are considered the perfect match for each other. Tales of her beauty reaches the ears of Alauddin Khalji (Ranveer Singh), who is besotted by the description and wants to see her. Ratan Singh, of course, denies him this, thinking it to be against Rajput pride. This leads to an invasion of Chittor by Khalji. In order to avoid unnecessary bloodshed, Ratan Singh challenges Khalji to single combat. They both prove equal to each other at first but later Ratan Singh looks to have an upper hand. Deepika Padukone looked like she had walked off from the pages of history and her last scenes really gave one goosebump.
10. Chhapaak (2020)
Director: Meghna Gulzar
Chhapaak is based on the life of acid attack survivor Laxmi Agarwal. Deepika Padukone's beauty is legendary and it's a bold move indeed for her to begin her innings as a producer with a film where her face is disfigured almost the entire length. But the film isn't just a gloomy courtroom drama. It also points out that it's important for such girls to stop feeling like a victim. They shouldn't let tragedy rule their entire life. In one scene, Vikrant Massey's character tells Deepika to not look so happy as he's taping an interview. To which she replies that she doesn't want to curb her happiness. Playing her most challenging role so far, Deepika Padukone breathed life into every frame. She wasn’t a superstar playing a super glamorous role and made us believe we're watching the travails of a normal girl. One left the theatre teary-eyed but happy.
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article by Filmfare
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