In 2009 she appeared as a single mother of a child suffering from progeria in R. Balki's Paa, her performance in which ultimately won her a Best Actress award at Filmfare. 2010 saw the release of Ishqiya, starring Balan in a role for which she was praised and awarded.
A year later she followed it with two acclaimed portrayals of real-life characters, Sabrina Lal and Silk Smitha in the biopics No One Killed Jessica and The Dirty Picture, respectively. While in 2012, she carried her persona with brilliant performance in ‘Kahani'.
In fact “Dirty picture” did magic for her, bringing latest addition to the search engines in the cyber world, as this flick was most hunted by the viewers in the year ending 2011, and making most of the natives in the Bollywood admiring and praising her while leaving others to be jealous for achieving such success.
