In 2025, the top actresses remained absent, the ones who could have commanded strong roles. In any case, great roles for women are not even written in mainstream cinema, but when they get a role worth working for, they did their best.
Deepa Gahlot picks the Top 10 female performances, that were the best of the mixed lot.
Aneet Padda, Saiyaara
In Mohit Suri’s weepathon, the young actress played a role that was out of her zone of experience, but has strength and emotional vulnerability in her role of a poet who suffers from early onset Alzehiemer’s.
Monika Panwar, Nishaanchi
Anurag Kashyap’s female characters are rarely dull and played the tough mother of the twin protagonists, playing a woman who ages during the span of the film, without losing any of her fierce complexity.
Triptii Dimri, Dhadak 2
She is capable of playing frivolous mainstream roles, but when she gets to play an upper caste law student, who falls in love with a lower caste man, she brings to the part dignity and empathy.
Yami Gautam Dhar, Haq
This actress is on a roll and getting parts that would be the envy of her contemporaries; in this Suparn S Verma film, she played a woman who fights her husband’s betrayal, and defies society to demand her legal right to a maintenance for her children, when she is divorced.
Patralekhaa, Phule
The part of the real-life social reformer, Savitribai Phule in Anant Narayan Mahadevan’s film, she brings a fiery resolve to the woman who, along with her husband, Jyotiba Phule, fought against caste and gender discrimination.
Janhvi Kapoor, Param Sundari
Just her imitation of male stars from various South Indian languages was a hoot; she got the gist of the character in this Tushar Jalota film, understanding the malleable rules of a silly Bollywood romcom.
Rakul Singh, De De Pyaar De 2
As a young woman in love with a much older man, in this Anshul Sharma film, she is spirited when she needs to be and aggressive when the situation demands it, as she faces hostility from her father and passivity from her fiance.
Huma Qureshi, Single Salma
A financially independent woman, who looks after her family, her crime is that she is past the age of 30 and unmarried; in this sweet romcom by Nachiket Samant, she is unapologetic and firm in her resolve to marry if and when she pleases.
Fatima Sana Shaikh, Gustaakh Ishq
In a quiet, old style romance, directed by Vibhu Puri, in spite of a sketchily written role, she brought stillness and an unhurried grace to the role of the daughter of an eccentric poet.
Sonal Madhukumar, Humans In The Loop
As an Adivasi woman resetting her life after her partner leaves, in Aaranya Sahay’s multiple award-winning film, her face show a range of emotions as she copes with her job in an unfamiliar AI data centre set-up, and building a bond of trust with her angry, lonely, teenage daughter.
Photographs curated by Satish Bodas/Rediff
