Sapna Sappu
Career
Born Zarina Sheikh in Nashik, she entered Hindi cinema in 1998 with Kanti Shah’s Gunda, playing Mithun Chakraborty’s sister, and over more than two decades appeared in over 250 films in Hindi, Bhojpuri and Gujarati. Her work belongs to the Hindi B-circuit: very low budgets, horror and action formulas, second-run and small-town exhibition, and censor certification, because a certificate was the only way into a cinema. She was profiled by Vice in 2024 as a leading figure of Indian pulp cinema. In 2020 she returned to screen work in an adult web series produced for an Indian streaming application, which is a different business from the theatrical circuit that made her name.
Signature: The Hindi B-circuit is the industry most often mistaken for an Indian pornography industry, and she is its most prolific surviving lead. The films were certified for theatrical release and are not pornographic.
Best known for
Mainstream credits
- Gunda (1998)
- Hindi B-circuit features, 1998–2018
- Bhojpuri and Gujarati film work
Ranked alongside
Sources and verification2 sources
- Date and place of birth
- The 250-film figure, which rests on a biography sourced largely to interviews
- Which titles carried an adults-only certificate
- Real name
