Nandita Morarji or Namratha Sadanah better known as Nagma (born 25 December 1974), is an Indian actress who as acted in films in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and various other Indian languages. At her peak in the 1990s, The Hindu states that she "dominated Tamil cinema".
Born of a Muslim mother and a Hindu father on Christmas Day, she began her acting career in Bollywood and acted in a few movies but shifted south before returning to Mumbai. Although sometimes listed in film credits as Naghma, she should not to be confused with an earlier actress who went by the same stage name - that mistake is made in her listing on the Internet Movie Database website.
Nagma has acted in a broad range of India's languages: Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali, Bhojpuri, Punjabi, and now Marathi.
Nagma's biological father was Sri Arvind Pratapsinh Morarji, who was involved in the textile industry. Her mother is Seema Sadhana, who married Morarji in 1972, separating only "a few years later". According to Nagma's passport, the name given to her at birth was Nandita, and it is by that name that she was referred to in an obituary printed by the family when her father, Arvind Morarji, died.
After divorcing Morarji "due to some family problems," Nagma's mother later married Chander Sadanah, a film producer, with whom she had two other daughters, Jyothika (who is a Tamil Cinema actress) and Radhika, who also acted in a Tamil movie, as well as a son named Suraj. Through her biological father, who later re-married, Nagma has two more half-brothers, Dhanraj and Yuvraj.
Nagma remained close to her biological father up until his death on 1 January 2006. She explained to one Mumbai reporter that: "I am proud of the fact that I belong to the respectable Dharamsinh Morarji family. My mother was legally married to Arvind Morarji at a public function at Radio Club at Colaba." It was Nagma's mother who encouraged her to become an actress, and is said to have been her "constant companion on the film sets" for several years. Nagma has a clothing boutique on Mumbai's Hill Road called Nagma's, which was inaugurated in September 2003 by Akshay Kumar.
