Nimmi was the perennial and ultimate 'unkissed' village beauty
of Bollywood's 'Golden Era' of the 1950s. She was a vivacious untrained
natural performer, who brought an air of uninhibited spontaneity to
her characterizations. Physically, Nimmi was possibly Hindi Popular
Cinema's most diminutive heroine, she was about 5 foot tall (152cm)
in shoes, with expressive saucer eyes, an unpretentious innocence, and
an underlying eroticism that made her a favorite of the movie going
public.
She debuted in Raj Kapoor's "Barsaat" [1949] when she
was 17 years old where she played the role of a naive, hopelessly romantic,
mountain girl. It was a character she would go on to reprise in a number
of films throughout the 1950s. Nimmi acted with all the top actors of
her day and had a special on screen chemistry with Dilip Kumar. They
made a hit on-screen pairing and starred in 5 films together among them,
"Deedar", "Daag", and "Amar".
