Happy birthday Deepika Padukone: Remember these ads that made her famous before Bollywood debut in Om Shanti Om?

Deepika Padukone was spotted with Ranveer Singh at Mumbai airport recently as the two left for her birthday vacation. The actor will celebrate her 37th birthday on January 5.

In 2007, Deepika made her acting debut with Farah Khan’s Om Shanti Om, which also featured Shah Rukh Khan. Before she became one of the highest-paid actors in Bollywood, Deepika was a model, and was seen in many TV commercials in the 2000s.

One of the first ads that featured Deepika was for a toothpaste brand. The 2004 ad saw her dancing in the bathroom along with an animated Close-Up toothpaste. Over the next few years, along with walking the ramp at fashion shows for some of the biggest designers in the country, Deepika Padukone was also grabbing attention with her TV commercials for brands like Limca. The actor was seen dancing in the rain and jumping in puddles of muddy water on the road in a Limca ad. She drank from a bottle of Limca almost the entire time in the commercial.

Another old ad showed Deepika promoting a Chennai-based clothing store called Naihaa. The commercial showed her as a modern woman with a career in the corporate world, who is still connected to her Indian roots. She meets a prospective groom in the ad, who seemed as impressed with her.

Before modelling, Deepika, the elder daughter of Indian badminton legend Prakash Padukone, was a national-level badminton player. After years of modeling, Deepika became an actor. It’s been 15 years since Deepika joined films with Om Shanti Om, in which she played a movie star as well as an actor hired to impersonate this aforementioned movie star.

Since then she has worked with some of the most-acclaimed directors of Bollywood – from Sanjay Leela Bhansali (Goliyon Ki Rasleela Ram-Leela, Bajirao Mastani, Padmaavat) to Shoojit Sircar (Piku). Deepika was last seen in Gehraiyaan (2022), which also featured Ananya Panday and Siddhant Chaturvedi. The film was directed by Shakun Batra, and backed by Karan Johar. She will next be seen with Shah Rukh Khan in Pathaan, which is set to be released on January 25. She also has Fighter with Hrithik Roshan, among other upcoming projects.