Sayali Bhagat – Femina Miss India World 2004 and Bollywood actress

Sayali Bhagat is a former model and Bollywood actress. She was crowned Femina Miss India World in 2004, after which she joined Bollywood. Though she doesn’t have a successful career in Bollywood, she managed to play some lead roles on screen. She made an impressive debut with The Train in 2007, playing Emraan Hashmi’s wife onscreen. Good Luck, Halla Bol, Impatient Vivek, Jail, Paying Guests, Ghost, Rajdhani Express, Yaariyan etc are some of her noted roles, playing lead and supporting roles. She has also appeared in a few south Indian films.

Successful modelling journey gave her entry to films

Sayali Bhagat was born in 1984 in Nasik, Maharashtra. She hails from a Gujarati family. She started her career as a model and appeared in many fashion shows since her early days in modelling. She contested in Femina Miss India 2004 which proved to be a major turning point of her life, where she became the first runner-up and was crowned Femina Miss India World.

The Train in 2007 marked her screen debut. Though the movie flopped at box office, her performance got noticed and she got more offers from Bollywood. However her movies flopped one after another and she moved to supporting roles. Most of those movies failed miserably at box office. She tried her luck in south Indian movies too, but couldn’t succeed. Telugu movie, Blade Babji was her first release in any south Indian language.

Newtonin Moondram Vidhi in a lead role marked her debut in Tamil and the movie fared good at box office. She was paired with S. J. Suryaah in this action flick. Later many of her movies got shelved or delayed which affected her career. Till now she has appeared in Hindi, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Punjabi and English language films. Rajdhani Express, Ghost, Impatient Vivek and Yaariyan are some of her Bollywood appearances in the early 2010s. In 2013 she married businessman Navneet Pratap Singh.

Sayali Bhagat – Some interesting and less-known facts

1. She appeared in a music video for the popular Punjabi song “Aish Karo” by A.S. Kang.

2. In one of the episodes of the prank show MTV Bakra, she interviewed cricketer Rahul Dravid in the pretext of a journalist from Singapore.  

3. A leading model, she formerly served as the brand promoter of MTNL Bharat Berry Services.

4. In 2011 she accused her co-star Shiney Ahuja of sexual harassment, while filming for the horror movie, Ghost.

5. Many scenes of her movie, Ghost were edited off for its violent content. The film also landed into  controversies for hurting religious sentiments. Though the movie was a flop her performance in the film was widely appreciated.