Shefali Shah (née Shetty) was born in July 1974 and is the only child of Sudhakar Shetty (former RBI

Reserve Bank of India

The Reserve Bank of India is the central banking institution of India and controls the monetary policy of the rupee as well as US$300.21 billion of currency reserves. The institution was established on 1 April 1935 during the British Raj in accordance with the provisions of the Reserve Bank of...

 employee) and Shobha Shetty (a homeopathy

Homeopathy

Homeopathy is a form of alternative medicine in which practitioners claim to treat patients using highly diluted preparations that are believed to cause healthy people to exhibit symptoms that are similar to those exhibited by the patient...

 doctor). She spent her early childhood at the RBI quarters in Santa Cruz, Mumbai

Mumbai

Mumbai , formerly known as Bombay in English, is the capital of the Indian state of Maharashtra. It is the most populous city in India, and the fourth most populous city in the world, with a total metropolitan area population of approximately 20.5 million...

 where she attended Arya Vidya Mandir

Arya Vidya Mandir

Arya Vidya Mandir is a group of schools located in Mumbai, India, which offers English medium education and focuses on holistic growth of the child.-Description:...

, Santacruz, Mumbai.
Shah made her film debut with Rangeela

Rangeela (film)

Rangeela is a 1995 Hindi film directed by Ram Gopal Varma, and starring Aamir Khan, Jackie Shroff and Urmila Matondkar.Rangeela was music director A. R. Rahman's debut Hindi film with an original score, as the previous ones were dubbed from his Tamil scores...

(1995), although she only had a few scenes in the film. She ventured into television with the serial Kabhie Kabhie.

She starred in the critically acclaimed film Satya

Satya (film)

Satya is a 1998 Hindi crime film directed by Ram Gopal Varma with a screenplay by Anurag Kashyap and Saurabh Shukla. It stars J. D. Chakravarthy, Manoj Bajpai, Urmila Matondkar and Shefali Shah...

(1998) for which she received the Star Screen Award Best Supporting Actress

Star Screen Award Best Supporting Actress

The Star Screen Award Best Supporting Actress is chosen via a distinguished panel of judges from the film industry of India. The winners are announced in January....

 and a Filmfare Critics Award for Best Actress.

Shah starred in the hit Waqt: The Race Against Time

Waqt: The Race Against Time

Waqt is a Hindi film, released in India and the United Kingdom on 22 April 2005. It is a remake of a 1999 Malayalam movie Veendum Chila Veettukaryangal.Waqt is loaded with family drama and comedy...

(2005) as Amitabh Bachchan

Amitabh Bachchan

Amitabh Bachchan is an Indian film actor. He first gained popularity in the early 1970s as the "angry young man" of Hindi cinema, and has since appeared in over 180 Indian films in a career spanning more than four decades...

's wife.