Leela Chitnis was an Indian actress who primarily worked in the Hindi film industry. In her early years, she starred as a romantic lead, but she is best known for her later roles playing a virtuous and upright mother to leading stars. In the 1930s, the well-educated Leela Chitnis became a star due to her starring roles in a number of Bombay Talkies opposite Ashok Kumar. The young actress was a mother and divorcee and earned the honour of being the first Indian to endorse the soap Lux in advertisements seen around the country. Leela was acclaimed for films like Awaara (1951), Ganga Jumna (1961), Sadhna (1958), Hum Dono (1961), and Shaheed (1948) as the long-suffering mother or maternal figure who usually meets a dire end. There were others who followed in her footsteps, actresses like Achala Sachdev and Nirupa Roy, but Leela Chitnis was the primary choice for the role as per the film makers. She last appeared in 1987 drama film Dil Tujhko Diya.