This heroine was once India's highest-paid actor, earned much more than Shah Rukh Khan, Amitabh Bachchan, Salman Khan, Rajinikanth, quit films at 33 due to..., her name is..

Deepika Padukone recently exited Sandeep Reddy Vanga's Spirit, co-starring Prabhas. The controversy around Deepika Padukone's conditions for working in the film has been highly discussed in the media for the past few days, however, one of the biggest issues that has cropped up is the actress's demand for Rs 20 crore fees to be a part of the film. Many are also discussing the issue of the gender pay gap, wherein Deepika Padukone's demand of Rs 20 crore is deemed excessive, but Prabhas' charging over Rs 100 crore is normalised. Amid this debate, it is also important to note that there have been times in Bollywood when female stars did rule the roost. There was a time in Bollywood when a 'heroine' was India's highest-paid actor, more than the three Khans, Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan, and Aamir Khan. 

We are talking about none other than one of India's first pan-India stars, Sridevi, who, in the 90s, became the first female actor to charge Rs 1 crore for a film. For the 1993 film, Roop Ki Rani Choron Ka Raja, Sridevi charged Rs 1 crore, only trailing behind Chiranjeevi, who was paid more than her at the time. By the mid-90s, the Rs 1 crore club was joined by Amitabh Bachchan and Kamal Haasan too, but by then, Sridevi was charging more than these superstars. 

The three Khans, Aamir Khan, Shah Rukh Khan, and Salman Khan, entered Bollywood around the early 90s. At the time, the three Khans and Sunny Deol and Sanjay Dutt, other emerging superstars of Bollywood, were still charging somewhere between Rs 50-75 lakh, much less than Sridevi. 

It was only when Sridevi took a break from films that the three Khans crossed the Rs 1 crore mark. Sridevi was 33 when she announced that she would quit films in 1996. Her last release was the 1997 film Judaai, for almost 15 years. Sridevi was at the peak of her career but decided to quit films to concentrate on her family life, especially raising her daughters, Janhvi Kapoor and Khushi Kapoor. 

Sridevi did make a small comeback via the TV show Malini Iyer in 2004-05, but she made her silver screen comeback much later, in the 2012 film English Vinglish. Sridevi acted in a few more films before her tragic and untimely death in 2018 at the age of 54.