Tabu started her film career as a child artiste for Dev Anand’s Hum Naujawan. The film didn’t do phenomenally at the box -office, and since she wasn’t the lead actress, Tabu gained little mileage from it. The first film she signed on as lead actress was 'Prem', but finally, 'Pehla Pehla Pyar' released first and launched her as leading lady. Obviously, defining her celluloid debut still remains a difficult issue. But from the moment she appeared on, she struck home as a genuine stunner who didn’t need a nose-job to look good. Though about the first few films she signed on the less said, the better, she exhibited a marked acting talent. It took her about two years to go past the run-of-the mill roles and enter more serious spheres of acting, but in her formative years as an actress, she learn the Hindi film basics inside out.
 Comic roles with the likes of Govinda and Rishi Kapoor were complemented by more sober performances opposite Ajay Devgun and Sunny Deol. The period when she fully acquainted herself with commercial cinema was pivotal, because it was this point on that she acquired the liberty to choose her own scripts. Once established as a good actress (and a reliable draw at the box-office), Tabu started experimenting. Tabu entered alternative (for lack of better word) cinema in steps. She began with Kala-Pani, a South-produced film about the freedom movement and followed it up with another good performance in Kadalan Desam, another Tamil blockbuster. In Jeet she was cast opposite Sunny Deol. The film was by no means describable as serious cinema, probably as strictly a commercial film as a Manmohan Desai potboiler.
However, Tabu's performance won the admiration of many, as she overshadowed the lead actress, Karishma Kapoor even though what she had in the film wasn't much more than a character role. But the high-point of her cinema career was her performance in Maachis. As a young Sikh girl forced to take a stand in the backdrop of the Punjab terrorism period, Tabu matched up in performance to the skill of her director Gulzar. Maachis is one of the few concerted efforts by an actress in the commercial Hindi film industry to branch into serious cinema.
 While ‘Maachis’ established her as an excellent actress, Virasat reconfirmed that fact. Again, in a small role, Tabu effectively eclipsed all the other cast members. Similarly, in Border, Tabu won recognition for her small, but perfectly underplayed role as wife of an army officer. Darmiyaan, directed by Kalpana Lajmi is an art film - not the kind that would associate itself with the average Bollywood starlet, nor the kind of film that commercial film actresses would normally exhaust their resources on. Tabu did a character role in the film, and stood up to the likes of Kiron Kher and Arif Zakaria - no mean task. Today, she is very choosy about her films and insists on doing few, but select films every year. She has already carved a niche for herself in the Indian film industry as an actress to be taken very seriously. And if the kind of work she has come up with is any indication of things to come, we have a lot more of Tabu to look forward to.
Awards Won:
| National Award for Maachis (1997) | Critis Award for Virasat (Filmfare - 1998) |
| 49th National Award for Chandni Bar. |
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